If for any reason you are not connected to the internet, you should get a message indicating that ping could not find the specified host (ie the computer at the URL you specified). As usual, if in doubt, try the connection with a browser.
You may also wish to read the advice on how to deal with firewalls given in Activity 9.1.
If successful, you should see that ping reports some statistics for the time taken in milliseconds for each data packet to get there and back. It also shows the numerical IP address corresponding to the symbolic name used. To do this, the ping request has used the Internet DNS to find the numerical IP address.
The ping may not always work; sometimes a request can time out. Some sites do not respond to ping messages. If it still does not work after trying again a couple of times, you will need to try another web site
When trying other sites, it may be interesting to choose some sites close to where you are and others very far away, perhaps on other continents, so see how fast the data travels. As before if the ping request times out, try again or try another site.
If you ping our own computer's symbolic name when connected to the internet you should find your own numerical IP address. If you are offline, you should get a different numerical IP address, 127.0.0.1, the so-called loopback address. This is a special IP address which always refers to the local host computer - it is discussed in more detail later in the unit.