Ping and Traceroute are two related network utilities that are commonly used by both Network Administrators and regular users alike.

Ping allows the user to determine if a particular host is alive by sending an ICMP Echo request. If the remote host is alive it should respond with an ICMP Echo reply.

Traceroute allows the user to determine the route packets are taking to a particular host. Traceroute works by increasing the time-to-live value of packets and seeing how far they get, until they reach the given destination; thus, a lengthening trail of hosts passed through is built up.

Ping and Traceroute both require the transmission and receipt of ICMP packets. Firewalls, routers and network configurations can affect the performance and results of such utilities by modifying or dropping ICMP packets, and may even block the ping/traceroute altogether.

There are six variables that you can adjust to customize the pings and traces, these are:
 Pings - the number of times to send a ping request (default 4)
 Size - size of the ping request (default 32)
 Timeout - how long each packet should wait (default 1000 milliseconds)
 Max Hops - the maximum number of destinations a packet is allowed to traverse. 
 Don't Fragment - sends the ping request as one packet (larger packets are normally fragmented into smaller packets, unless this flag is set)
 Resolve Hosts - IP addresses will be resolved and displayed when possible.