From BigSoft

Contents 1 What is a Ping? 2 What is a Trace route? 3 Which is better Ping or Trace route? 4 How do I use Ping? 5 How do I use Trace route? 6 Uploading results

[edit] What is a Ping?

Ping can be thought of in the same way as a sonar ping: a bolt of sound that is reflected off an object underwater. In our case the water is a computer network and a ping is a network packet.

[edit] What is a Trace route?

A trace route is similar to a ping but it fires back updates of how the ping is travelling throw the network. It will give you the jorney it has taken, how long it waited at each hop and the time it took to travel between hops.

[edit] Which is better Ping or Trace route?

If you are having trouble reaching another node on the network you can try to ping the other node. If the ping fails you can investigate further with a trace route. The trace route will tell you how far you got, it will also translate all the IP addresses into domain names so you can get an idea of where there network node is geographically.

[edit] How do I use Ping?

1. Open a command DOS box: Start -> Run: enter cmd
2. Type: ping <address> > 2008-04-07-ping-home-work.txt

[edit] How do I use Trace route?

1. Open a command DOS box: Start -> run: enter cmd
2. Type: tracert <address> > 2008-04-07-traceroute-home-work.txt

[edit] Uploading results

The output of running the command will be sent to a file called which follows the Bigsoft output file naming convention.