How to: Ping a Server to Test Connectivity of a Linux VPS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• LOCATING YOUR VPS IP ADDRESS
• PERFORMING THE PING TEST
  • 1. Open the command prompt or terminal
  • 2. Enter the Ping command
    • UNDERSTANDING PING OUTPUT

When experiencing connectivity issues one of the simplest ways to determine network connectivity is performing a Ping test. A Ping test will determine if a particular host is reachable, and gauge the speed of the connection. The following guide will show you where to locate your SkySilk VPS IP address, how to perform a Ping test, and explain what the output means.

LOCATING YOUR VPS IP ADDRESS

You can locate your VPS IP address on your VPS dashboard.

We will use this IP address to perform a Ping test.

PERFORMING THE PING TEST

1. Open the command prompt or terminal

All operating systems come with a built in command line interface you can use to perform a Ping test.

• Windows - Open either PowerShell or Command Prompt. Both can be found by clicking on the start button and searching for "PowerShell" or "cmd".
• Mac OSX - Open the Terminal. It is located in Applications > Utilities > Terminal.
• Linux - Open a Telnet/Terminal window. It is usually located in the Accessories folder in the Applications directory. If you are running Ubuntu you can access it with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+T.

For this guide we will be using Windows Command Prompt

2. Enter the Ping command

Type ping hostname or ping IP address

• A hostname usually refers to a website address. For example to perform a Ping test on www.skysilk.com you would enter:

ping www.skysilk.com

• An IP address is a computers location on a network or the internet. Using the above server as an example we are going to ping 64.52.86.221:

ping 64.52.86.221

Press enter, the following output is the result of a Ping test.

Note: You may have to press Ctrl+C to interrupt the ping command on some operating systems.

UNDERSTANDING PING OUTPUT

1. The first line tells you what the command is doing. It repeats the inputted address and tells you how much data is being sent.

2. A successful Ping command lets us learn a bit about the connection.

• Time is how long in milliseconds the connection took. Lower is better.
• TTL is how many hops occurred during the packet transfer process. The lower the number the more routers it went through.

3. A summary of the test is provided at the end of the output.

• Lost packets mean the connection is poor or down.
• Approximate round trip gives you a general idea of the speed of your connection to the server.

Now you can perform a Ping test to check network connectivity!