Ping is a very old tool that has been used by the network admins for decades. Basically a ping command can be used from any operating system to check whether the remote host is up, running and also responding. For example, you can ping google.com or 8.8.8.8 to see if Google servers are running.
One another use of this command is to quickly check whether you are connected to the internet or not. When you want to know if your internet connection is working or not, you can ping a popular domain such as yahoo.com or bing.com. If you are receiving a reply from the domain, then your internet connection is working.
Similarly, we can check whether the configured DNS servers are working or not. We can ping a domain name (such as bing.com) and see if we get reply. If we do not get reply, then we can try pinging an IP address (such as 1.1.1.1) and check for the reply. If we get a reply now, then there is problem with the DNS server configuration.
If you are running a Windows PC, then you can ping multiple remote hosts using a freeware application called Ping Monster. As its title implies, it can ping a large number of remote servers, remote workstations and networked devices. It can be configured both by using the remote server names as well as their IP addresses.
We can add number of seconds after which the ping is done again. This is set to be 5 seconds which means that the domains will be pinged all over again after 5 seconds. There are options to alert you through email messages when the domain pinging is unsuccessful.
Ping Monster is a portable application for pinging a number of remote hosts over and over again. When it detects that the remote host is down then it can alert you audibly as well as through an email message.
You can download Ping Monster from http://zolalab.com.br/softs.