About slow Internet download, email and PING freeware

Your Internet seems to be slow
and you want to know where the hang-up is?

Packets Internet Groper (Ping) are utilities that also report the time it takes for a host to respond. Ping are small data packets sent from one host to a remote computer, that request a response from the recipient and brings back all kind of useful info.

Your Internet seems to be slow and you want to know where the hang-up is? Ping your ISP server or the website you are visiting, and you should be able to figure out which, is slowing you down.

Packets Internet Groper (Ping) are utilities that also report the time it takes for a host to respond. Ping are small data packets (datagram) sent from one host to a remote computer, that request a response from the recipient and brings back all kind of useful info. If, after a predetermined time, the packet does not return the ping command will return with "destination host unreachable".

Notes: TCP the protocol that governs Internet traffic travel in bursts of segments (packets or datagram) of around 536 bytes (4,288 bits). See: Bits.bytes

Your Internet seems to be slow and you want to know where the hang-up is? Ping your ISP server or the website you are visiting, and you should be able to figure out which, is slowing you down.

Slow respond times and time outs, usually indicate packet losses. Problems with the site you are visiting or bottleneck with the Internet backbone. Internet bottleneck is something you can't do nothing, except to quit surfing.

This how to connect to the mail server using PING

PING - your server using Window's 2000,NT,XP
After you have logged on (online)
Click:
>Start >Run >Open >key-in: cmd.exe
>Click OK for the command prompt

You can also download a PING freeware utility (all windows OS) the program is about 300 Kb and should only takes a few minutes to download -- click here

PING - your server using Window's Win95,98,Me
After you have logged on (online)
Click:
>START >PROGRAMS >MS DOS prompt and type: -t follow by your ISP DNS (DNS domain name server) IP address.

Example:
ping -t 189.225.137.18 contact your ISP to find out their DNS or you can just do this:
ping -t www.your-isp.com

2. This will start the ping program. This program will ping the server specified. The -t option after the ping specifies that the server is to be repeatedly pinged until the program is terminated.

3. You will see a series of similar text lines appearing one after the other. The number after time= is the amount of time taken to send a request to the server and receive a reply from it..

4. If you ping another server that is not of your own ISP, the ping time is usually slower and would return a ping time of 150-200 milliseconds (or less)

You should normally get better ping times if your ping the server of your ISP in the region of 282-314 milliseconds. When you ping your server and then other server you will have a good indicator of how fast your connection is.

5. To notify the server that you are constantly connected after you have ping your server, (a) minimize your DOS box (do not close it) and continue to surf or download as normal. This should keep you connected until you decide to terminate ping.

6. When you are finished "maximize" your DOS box, type Ctrl-C to terminate the ping program.

For more info on Ping? www.freesoft.org/CIE/Topics/53.htm

Simple Network Troubleshooting
by Jay Fougere (MCSE, MCSA) / iEntry Staff Editor

I know that working from the command line can be intimidating to those of us who have always had a nice graphical interface to use. I am convinced, however, once you see how easy to use and effective the following tools are, you will be hooked. Even if you are an old pro, read on. You may find a use for one of these tools that you had not before considered.

The simplest of these tools is the ping utility. Ping is used to see if another IP address is valid and reachable. What ping does is to send a packet to the specified address and wait for it to return. During the interim, the elapsed time is recorded and reported if the packet successfully reaches its destination and an acknowledgement is returned. If, after a predetermined time, the packet does not return the ping command will return with "destination host unreachable".

In Windows, ping will repeat this process four times, reporting its results as it goes. Linux/Unix/BSD machines will repeat the process until you stop it by pressing "ctrl" and "c" simultaneously. The syntax is straightforward, simply type "ping w.x.y.z" (where w.x.y.z is the IP address of the machine that you are trying to reach). If you have a protocol installed that supports it, you can also ping by NetBIOS name or DNS name. You can type "ping /?" to get a list of useful switches when it is being used under Windows. You can get similar information for *nix/*BSD by typing "man ping".

One of the most useful switches for ping when it is run under Windows is "ping -a w.x.y.z" . This will return the full DNS name of the target host, if it is available, in addition to the information that is normally returned. To do the same thing with a *nix machine, all that you have to do is use the "host" command. To use host simply enter "host w.x.y.z".

Keep in mind that if the echo service is not running on the target machine (the machine that you are trying to ping), you will not receive a response. Just a note so that you know that just because you do not get a response does not mean that the machine is down. In these instances, you can use 'tracert' or 'traceroute' to help determine if a node is up.

You can also use a port scanner, although that is outside the realm of this article. If you are interested in port scanners, be sure to have a look at this article...(see below)

If you cannot ping the host IP address that you had entered, you can still determine a bit more about your network using ping. If you ping your own IP address successfully, you will know that your NIC (Network Interface Card) is functioning correctly.

In the event that pinging your own IP address does not produce desired results, you can ping 127.0.0.1. This address is known as the local loopback address. This will tell you if TCP/IP is installed correctly on your system. If you cannot ping your own IP address and you can not ping your local loopback address, do not run out and buy a new NIC. Simply (re)install TCP/IP on your machine. If you can successfully ping the local loopback address but not your machine's IP address you may try to reinstall the drivers for your network card.

traceroute
Freeware
available from samspade.org

OK, let's say you couldn't ping your destination host and you did not know what your local IP address is, to ping it. You can find out some very important information about your local machine using ipconfig (or ifconfig for you *nix/*BSD people). This will tell you the DNS name of the machine that you are using along with the MAC (Media Access Control) and IP address for all network adapters on your machine.

These tools will also provide some other useful information. If you do not see any evidence of a NIC you will have a pretty good idea that it is not installed properly. If any network adapters have an IP address of 0.0.0.0 (or 169.254.X.X on Windows 2000 machines) you will know that your machine is configured incorrectly and simply need to reconfigure TCP/IP. On a Windows machine you can find a little more information by following the ipconfig command with the "/all" switch. Ipconfig and ifconfig can do much more than just tell you information about your local machine; however that is a bit beyond the scope of this article. For Windows users, you can learn more by using the "/?" switch while you Linux/Unix people will have to read the man pages (man ifconfig) or, depending on your distribution, you may find out more with the --help switch.

Another cool thing that you can do is save the output of ipconfig or ifconfig (or any command from the command line that outputs to standard output - a.k.a. the screen) to a text file for later reference. This is accomplished by following the command with ">filename.txt". This will work in both Windows and Linux/Unix and can be used to redirect the output of almost any command to a file. This can be very useful for documenting the output of a command.

In small networks that do not use dynamic IP addressing schemes you can print out these text files and tape them inside the case of each machine on the network. This is helpful in the event that you have problems in the future; you will have a handy reference at your disposal.

Suppose that you wanted to see the path that a packet had to take to reach its destination address. If you are using Windows use "tracert" or, if you are using Linux/Unix, use "traceroute" followed by the IP address or DNS name of the target host. This will not only show the latency time between each "hop" but the name (if it is available) and IP address of each node as well.

Another useful tool that is very similar to tracert is pathping. It is used in the same manner as ping or traceroute and will return results that are very similar to traceroute. The major difference between pathping and tracert is that pathping will not only trace the route, but will also send a series of packets to each node (hop) in the path. It then analyzes the latency times (ping times) at each node and will show these times along with the number of packets sent to each node, the number of packets dropped, and percentage of packets that made it to their destination.

What does all of this tell you? Primarily this information is useful in locating bottlenecks in a large routed network. You know that if one node consistently demonstrates higher latency times and/or more packets dropped, this is the weak link in the path and the area to look at first.

In conclusion, you can very quickly diagnose many network connectivity problems with these easy to use tools. Once you become more familiar with them, you will be able to tell even more about the status of your network. Go ahead, try them out and see what you can learn about the network that you are on, even if that network is the internet.

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