I can't ping my website! Is the server down?

Documentation Websites and PHP
1

If you try to ping your website, or any free hosting related server or IP address, you will most likely see the ping fail with 100% packet loss.

On Windows, the output will look something like this:

> ping example.com

Pinging example.com [185.27.134.??] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 185.27.134.??:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

Does this mean the server is down?

No, failing to ping a server does not automatically mean a server is down.

Many computers and servers allow ping requests and responses to verify the connection quality to the system. If the server is down, then the ping requests fail.

However, it’s possible with firewall rules to block ping traffic to and from a system or network. If that’s the case, then pinging the server will not work but other services (like web traffic) will be unaffected and work as usual.

Our servers have such firewalls setup to block ping traffic. This was done for security and to prevent exposing details about our network.

So our servers never respond to ping requests, even when your website is up and everything is working.

In short: ping not working only means the server is down if you know the server is configured to respond to pings. Our servers are not configured to respond to pings.

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2

i dont think pinging will expose details, just response times??

3

Ping itself only shows the round trip time for the whole journey. Traceroute also shows the steps that are taken by the packet, which can provide details about network topology. And traceroute also makes use of ICMP (ping) packets. So by blocking ping traffic, we also block traceroute.

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4

ah

5

2 posts were split to a new topic: Chat Website

6

Aren’t real web requests pings also?

7

No, they are formatted differently.

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8

No. Web requests use HTTP packets, which runs on TCP (usually), which runs on IP. Ping requests use ICMP, which is a different protocol.

In the OSI model, they are the same on layer 1 and 2, but different in layer 3 and up.

So they are completely different network wise and extremely easy to block or allow separately.

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