pinging sites

[rookie1010]

Hi
I was trying to access a site today, and i could not get through, i decided to ping the site to see if it was up. all packets reported timeout.

i pinged a couple more sites, and one of them though up and running( access is real good), reported all packets had timed out.

why is this so, is the ping an accurate report of the tsite up and running, or am i mistaken

 

[tylertherobot]

Firewalls.

 

[tylertherobot]

Sorry let me elaborate more on that.

Some sites use different ports than 80 for people to access their site, so they open up something like, oh, say port 8001 to redirect.

It might work if you ping www.whateverthesite.whatever:8001

Then you're pinging that port to find out if it's the right one or not

But again, some firewalls on servers can stop this.

Anyway, a commonly used port as an alternative for 80 is 8080.

 

[rookie1010]

so when i ping a site, i am in effect pinging the http port?

i tried pinging the following
www.reuters.com:8001

i got the response
PIng request could not fine host www.reuters.com:8001. please chech the name and try again. can you tell me what did i do wrong