Its main function is to determine whether or not a host, or interface, is physically powered on and that a route exists to it. The ping utility sends a packet to the specified host and waits for a reply. The host address and round-trip times for each pair of packets are displayed. In addition, the total number of packets sent, received, percent packet loss and minimum, average and maximum round-trip times are displayed when the program exits or when the user quits the program.
Pause wait seconds between sending each query packet.
By default, ping waits one second between each packet. If preload is specified, ping sends that many packets as fast as possible before continuing in its normal mode. Numeric output only. No attempt will be made to lookup symbolic names for host addresses. This is useful for diagnosing data-dependent problems in a network.