Enter a domain or an IP address. Our test server sends it four ping requests and shows how many came back and how long each one took.
Ping Test Overview
What is ping?
Ping is one of the oldest network tools. It sends a small ICMP echo request to a host and waits for an echo reply. The time between the two is the round trip time, measured in milliseconds. If no reply comes back, the request counts as lost.
Why run a ping test?
A ping test answers three questions quickly. Is the host reachable from the internet? How long does a round trip to it take? Are any packets going missing on the way? It is a good first step when a website feels slow, when a server seems to be down, or right after moving a site to new hosting.
How does this ping test work?
The requests leave from our own test server on the internet, not from your computer, so your home or office connection does not change the result. The host you test only sees the address of our test server. We send four requests and then show the replies exactly as the ping command printed them, followed by a short summary.
How do I read the results?
- Packets sent and received: four out of four means every request got an answer.
- Packet loss: 0% is healthy. Any loss points to a busy or unstable link somewhere on the path.
- Average and maximum time: under 50 ms usually means the host is close by. Between countries or continents, 150 to 300 ms is normal.
A host that does not answer is not always down. Many firewalls block ping on purpose, including some large cloud networks. If the website or mail service still works, the host is simply ignoring ping.
FAQs
Web browsers connect over TCP on port 80 (HTTP) or 443 (HTTPS), whereas Ping uses ICMP, which has no port numbers. Many cloud platforms (such as AWS EC2, Google Cloud, and Azure), server firewalls, and reverse proxies like Cloudflare drop incoming ICMP Echo Requests by default to prevent ping-flood DDoS attacks. If your website loads normally over HTTPS, the server's firewall is simply blocking ICMP traffic.
High latency is most commonly caused by geographic distance between the client and server (fiber optic routing delay), congested transit peering links, or router bufferbloat. Jitter (large fluctuations in round-trip time between packets) typically occurs when network buffers fill up during high traffic bursts, or when an overloaded server CPU delays processing incoming ICMP packets.
Ping measures the total round-trip time and packet loss directly to a single destination host. Traceroute maps out every router hop along the path and measures latency at each hop individually. If a ping test shows unexpected packet loss or latency, a traceroute reveals the exact intermediate network router causing the bottleneck.
Yes. Our online ping tool supports both IPv4 and IPv6. When you enter a domain name, the tool resolves its published DNS records (A for IPv4, AAAA for IPv6) and initiates the test. You can also paste a raw IPv4 address (such as 8.8.8.8) or an IPv6 address directly into the input field.
"Request timed out" means the ICMP packet was sent across the network, but no response returned within the timeout threshold. This indicates the host is powered down, an intermediate firewall dropped the packet, or the return routing path is broken. "Destination host unreachable" means an intermediate router explicitly reported that it has no valid routing path to the destination address.
Ping Troubleshooting and Practical Fixes
Either the host is offline, or a firewall in front of it drops ICMP echo requests.
How to fix: Check whether the website or service opens normally. If it does, the firewall is blocking ping, and you can allow ICMP echo requests in the server or cloud firewall if you want ping to work.
Loss usually comes from a congested link, an overloaded server or a faulty network card.
How to fix: Run the test a few more times. If loss continues, ask your hosting provider to check the server and its network port. A traceroute helps show where on the path the loss starts.
The host may be far from our test server, or traffic may be taking a long detour.
How to fix: Host the site closer to your visitors or put it behind a content delivery network. A traceroute shows which part of the route adds the delay.
The name does not resolve to an IP address, so there is nothing to ping.
How to fix: Check that the domain has an A or AAAA record and that it has not expired. Then run the test again.
