Speed Measurement

Henry O'Henry

Could somebody explain in "non-tech" speak, what exactly Pings and suchlike really are. Could you also explain how I can measure mine, once I understand them, that is?

MickFarr

Henry O'Henry wrote:

Could somebody explain in "non-tech" speak, what exactly Pings and suchlike really are. Could you also explain how I can measure mine, once I understand them, that is?

You can read all about it here
http://www.just2good.co.uk/index.php?ITFrameSet.php?networkTools.htm

also check out the tracert command very handy for checking were your slow connection maybe

To use the ping command or tracert command you most open a CMD window. To do this go to start -> run and type in CMD a little black box should open there you can type

ping www.jolt.co.uk

and

tracert ww.jolt.co.uk

osmethod

when you connect 2 computers together and you want them to understand each other they need to have a protocol (predefined set of rules) to communicate.

the most common protocol is IP (Internet Protocol), which basically takes a information and breaks it down into small packet sized chunks to move it from computer to computer

as part of the pre-defined rules of IP their needs to be a way to test that IP is working i.e. that both computers are communicating, ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) is a subset of defined rules to enable this analysis.

Ping is a tool which sends a specific type of ICMP packet (ECHO_REQUEST datagram) from one computer to the other. It is designed such that when the other computer receives this particular packet it is supposed to reply with a response (ECHO_RESPONSE) packet.

Thus, if a reply is received communication is OK. If no reply received communication is NOT OK.

Example: ping www.eircom.net will give a response similar to

Reply from 159.134.198.138: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=55

Breaking this down, 159.134.198.138 is the IP ADDRESS of a computer in eircom, www.eircom.net is a name associated with this ip address, a concious decision made by eircom personnel.

Bytes=32 - this is the size of the packet sent to elicit a response

time=16ms - it took 16 microseconds for the full trip - leaving your computer and arriving at eircoms computer and returning back to yourself

TTL=55 - time to live - predefined length of time for the packet to get to ther and back. If the time is greater there will be a timeout

hope this helps...

osmethod

abccormac

Every time I try and do either of these I get request timed out messages. Any ideas why?

snappieT

Do you have a firewall enabled? It could be blocking ping.exe and tracert.exe

See also netstat (in cmd) to see what ports are open.

abccormac

I get the same result with the firewall turned off, so it's not that. Any other ideas?

Sparky

Router could be blocking you, if you have one

abccormac

I'm using a zyxel prestige 600 series modem as supplied by esat. I think it works as a router aswell as an adsl modem but I'm a bit out of my depth here so I'm not really sure.

diarmo

abccormac wrote:

I'm using a zyxel prestige 600 series modem as supplied by esat. I think it works as a router aswell as an adsl modem but I'm a bit out of my depth here so I'm not really sure.

The ZyXEL 623 that I got from EsatBT also blocks pings and tracerts.
But that could be caused by the inbuilt Router(which comes in very handy when added to a switch) and I dont know how to bypass it for pinging other IP addresses.

Any help for us poor unfortunates???