The simplest of all Internet tools is the humble ping command,
which lets you use the command prompt to contact a Web site and see
if it?s alive, and if it responds to your ping request. It also
resolves host names to IP addresses --- in other words, if you
issue the command ping www.pcworld.com, it will tell you the site?s
associated IP address. And it also tells you the speed of the
connection and response.
The free PingInfoView makes the simple ping command a lot more
useful. It lets you ping multiple Web sites simultaneously, will
ping the sites on any schedule you set, and displays the results in
a graphical interface, rather than in a command prompt.
Is this an earth-shaking tool? Certainly not. But if you use
ping at all, you?ll find it a useful, worthy alternative.
--Preston Gralla