okay... what the [Beep!] is a ping!? We recently got Broadband and thank the gods above that we have a fire wall because you have No Idea how many attempts have been made to hack this computer [nothing here anyways]. But one thing we don't understand is the 'Ping'. Being a high school student, it is Vaugly familier... I'm pretty darn sure it's bad... but I can't remember what it is!!! help? I ain a techie, nor do I wanna be... but we had like over one hundred attempts in two hours one day, and my dad's drumming his fingers and giving me the hard glare because that was my time... and I don got a clue where it could have come from!

What is a Ping? is all I'm asking for those of you who don feel like reading the essay above.

its like, network sonar. computers will ping an address to see if it gets a reply, it will ping it with a small bit (packet) of information, and check how much data is lost, as well as how fast the packets are returned. its a sneaky way to find out if a computer has a firewall too, you're firewall should deny most ping attempts, but if you didn't have a firewall, it says "hey, we're open"

Pings are not malicious by themselves. Start getting concerned when you get port-scanned.

A free product like Zonealarm should ease any fears about "pings" while no product is foolproof, free is good, and so is zonealarm.

aren't constant streams of pings (perhaps from multiple sources) annoyingly able to slow down your connections speeds?.. especially for those of us still in the dial-up age?

yeah, caedes says pings arent malicious
so I say we get all 106615 members to constantly ping caedes.net at the same time for a few hrs :)
(assuming the site accepts pings)

It doesn't. =P

party pooper

well... Norton seems to be doing his job... good little elf