Ping for Mac

$ ping -c 100 example.com

What it’s for

Ping checks whether a host answers, and how quickly. Each probe is timed from your Mac to the host and back. A steady, low time means a healthy path. Spikes and lost probes are what you notice as lag and stutter.

Use it when

• You want to know whether a server, a router or a device is up.
• A game or a call lags, and you want to see whether the delay is constant or comes in bursts.
• You change something and want a quick before-and-after.

Reading the result

Below the chart, every probe is listed, either as a table or as a terminal view in the familiar format of ping in Terminal. The statistics count what was sent, received and lost.

What you might see

• Every probe times out. The host may be down, or it may not answer this kind of probe. Try the other mode, or a port the host is known to serve.
• Connection refused. The host is up, but nothing listens on that port. The probe counts as lost, because no service answered.
• A steady time, but higher than you expected. Distance, or a slow link. Traceroute shows where on the path the time is added.
• Spikes only while someone downloads. That’s bufferbloat. Run Speed Test to grade it.

Options worth knowing

• Mode. TCP times a connection to a port, 443 by default, which almost every server answers. ICMP sends a classic echo, like ping in Terminal, which some hosts and networks block. See ICMP and TCP ping.
• Count, up to 10,000 probes, or Continuous until you stop it.
• Chart range: the last 50 probes, or the whole run.
• The name is looked up once, when you press Start, so every probe goes to the same address.

Related

• Latency, Jitter and Packet loss.
• MTR, to see at which hop the loss starts.