FJJP,
Ping.exe is built into the OS, as part of the TCP/IP protocol.
Run, Cmd, PING hostname or IP address. e.g. ping
www.pprune.org or ping 213.161.73.143. You can see all the command switches by simply typing ping. Generally you don't need any, although -t and -a can be helpful.
What are you looking for?
Well, if you ping a hostname and it resolves to an IP address, then it is likely that DNS is working correctly (assuming you haven't got the address in a local hosts file).
Second, if you get a response it shows that you have a physical connection to the host you are pinging, so your network is set up and working OK. If you don't get a response, it may simply be that the host is not responding, rather than indicating a problem. For this reason, it is useful to have one or two addresses (e.g.
www.pprune.org,
www.bbc.co.uk) that you know DO respond.
Third, you can see the response times - on a local network (your PC to your router) the response should be < 10ms. On the internet anything under 200ms is not unreasonable, over 500 is getting bad.
The default in Windows is 4 ICMP Echo requests (pings). You may see that not all get through, indicating that the connection is poor.
SD