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Sincerely, Charles Kozierok
Author and Publisher, The TCP/IP Guide
One of the most common classes of problems that network administrators are often called upon to solve is an inability of two hosts to communicate. For example, a user on a corporate network might not be able to retrieve one of his files from a local server, or another user might be having difficulty loading her favorite Web site. In these and many similar situations, one important step in diagnosing the problem is to verify that basic communication is possible between the TCP/IP software stacks on the two machines. This is most often done using the ping utility, or ping6 in IPv6 implementations.
Note: Some people say that “ping” is an acronym for “Packet Internet Groper”, while others insist that it is actually based on the use of the term to refer to a sonar pulse sent by a submarine to check for nearby objects. I really don’t know which of these is true, but I prefer the second explanation. Consider that the utility works in a way similar to a sonar “ping”, and that it was originally written by a gent named Mike Muuss, who worked at the US Army Ballistics Research Laboratory. The first explanation is weaker; it’s possible, but the phrase “Packet Internet Groper” isn’t really grammatical, and I don’t even want to think about what it is this utility is supposed to be “groping”! J
The ping diagnostic utility is one of the most commonly used, and is present in just about every TCP/IP implementation. It is usually implemented and accessed as a command-line utility, though there are also now graphical and menu-based versions of the program on some operating systems.