How do I ping another network device in Windows or Mac OS?

You can use the ping command to verify the connectivity between two network devices that are IP (Internet Protocol) based.

Windows

To ping another network device using a computer running Windows, complete the following:

1. To bring up the run dialog, press the Windows key + R.
2. Type cmd and press Enter.
3. Type ping <IP address> and press Enter. The IP address is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, where xxx is a number between 0 and 255. For example, to ping 192.168.1.1, you would type ping 192.168.1.1.

If the ping is successful, you should receive replies from the address that you are trying to ping. If the ping is unsuccessful, you need to diagnose your network setup further.

To verify if your local network adapter is working, you can ping 127.0.0.1, which is a loopback address. The loopback address is a virtual network port for most operating systems.

Mac OS

You can use the ping command to verify the connectivity between two network devices that are IP (Internet Protocol) based.

To ping a network device using a system that is running OSX, complete the following:

1. Click Applications > Utilities > Terminal.
2. Type ping -c <number of times to ping> <IP address>. The IP address is xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, where xxx is a number between 0 and 255. For example, to ping 192.168.1.1 five times, you would type ping -c 5 192.168.1.1.

Note: If you do not enter the number of times that you want to ping the IP address, your system will continuously ping the address until you manually stop it. To stop pinging the IP address, press Control + C.

If the ping is successful, you should receive replies from the address that you are trying to ping. If the ping is unsuccessful, you need to diagnose your network setup further.

To verify if your local network adapter is working, you can ping 127.0.0.1, which is a loopback address. The loopback address is a virtual network port for most operating systems.