What this Ping thing

Dknight

Hi there,

I am close to buying skydsl one way satellite.

I'm not very tech minded and keep reading about ping (I've had a good search but can't get definative answers).

What exactle is ping?
Should I be concerned about the skydsl ping times?
What is a good/bad ping time?
How can i measure my times?
In real terms how slow can it make a connection?
I'm in the Mallow, Co. Cork area, anybody had any experience of skydsl in this area?
And finally is it straight forward in keeping my uplaod(eircom dialup) server working Simultaneously to the download(skydsl), for things like sending emails/ using ebay?

Now that should be enough to keep you going for a bit on a Monday morning!

Cheers

Dave:)

Auvers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping

remember google is your friend

CrazyRabbit

A Ping is a dos based command that sends 4 packets of data to a server and measures the journey time.

Here is an example:

ping www.google.com

Pinging www.l.google.com [216.239.59.147] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=239
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=239
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=239
Reply from 216.239.59.147: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=239

Ping statistics for 216.239.59.147:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 38ms, Maximum = 39ms, Average = 38ms

bytes = the size of the 'packet' of data that was sent.

time = the time taken for the packet to be sent to the server and a reply received. A 'good' response time is typically anything below 250ms.

TTL = Time to Live. For every 'hop' along the network that the packet of data is sent, this value decreases by 1, starting at 255. If you ever see the error "TTL expired in transit", then it means that no path along the network (internet) was found to the target server. Normally a serious routing failure somewhere.

Ping does not work with all servers since they can be blocked by firewalls etc. So seeing 'request timed out' error messages does not necessarily indicate a problem. www.google.com and www.o2.ie both accept pings and are useful for testing with the ping command.

Lost packets (shown as a 'request timed out' error usually indicate a problem with your connection.

To locate the source of the problem, a ping can be made to each server/device along a network path, and you can see where packet loss first occurs. Further explaination would take a lot longer though, and I don't have time at the moment.

Dknight

Thanks Crazy rabbit, not sure I follow all of that but its a good start.

Sorry I really should have checked more on ggogle etc before asking the question, being a bit lazy I know.

Anybody shed light on the service from skydsl around North cork?

watty

It's satellite, so works more or less everywhere. It is NOT DSL and is NOT SKY. You need another internet connection too as it is not an Internet or Broadband connection. It is a Download accelerator.

Personally I would rather either get ISDN or ditch phone line and have two way sat (no good for games) if I couldn't get either Wireless or Cable or DSL or Metro broadband.

Even 3G/HSDPA and cancel phone line might be better/cheaper than Line Rental + dialup + Sky DSL.

Two way satellite is about 99 a month and no phone line needed.

Dknight

Yeh I am looking at 2 way from ebroadband and ehotspot but can't ket onto their webside to check out coverage.

Whats the story with the 3 setup, It sound like a great deal, are there any catches?

Thanks for the replys,

Dave

CrazyRabbit

Hmmm...I forgot to mention this earlier, but to do a ping command yourself you do the following:

1. Go to the Start menu in Windows.
2. Go to RUN
3. Type the word command and press OK.
4. Type the ping command.... ping www.google.com