Ping is a simple utility commonly found on systems using TCP/IP. Ping
allows you to do a basic check to see if a remote system is alive and
responding to TCP/IP, even if it is not accepting connections on
specific ports. Ping is also useful for measuring how "far away" a
remote system seems to be - lower reported numbers are an indication of
short round trip packet times.
This version of ping is designed for the early IBM PCs and similar
machines. It requires a minimal amount of memory to run, and it uses
some tricks to get more accurate timestamps than DOS normally allows
for.
And here is a screen shot of ping testing the response time to
www.brutman.com:
Pinging to my local router
(192.168.2.1) and then www.brutman.com
Note the reported times. Normal timer resolution under DOS is limited
to 55 milliseconds. This is how fast the BIOS timer clicks, and it
works out to about 18 times a second.
Ping can measure time down to 0.85 milliseconds. To do this it
reprograms the hardware timer to generate interrupts faster, and then
only passes the correct number of interrupts to the BIOS code.
This way BIOS keeps correct track of the time and everything else works
as it should, while Ping can get 1 millisecond accuracy while it needs
it.
Download
Ping is included with the other mTCP based applications. They can be downloaded from the main mTCP page here.
Created July 31st, 2008, Last updated July 5th, 2015
(C)opyright Michael B. Brutman, mbbrutman at gmail.com
