Felly sgrifennodd JPG :
"Ping" is a small program on all windows computers that allows you to
send a few data strings to any computer or device on a network,
including the internet. A healthy device will respond and give
timings. The term seems to have moved over to usenet as a hailing
method.

I hate to be pedantic, but it was of course a Unix program long before
it was an MS Windows program; Microsoft just copied it, like they did
all their good ideas.

Usenet has its roots back in the time when "rn" was THE newsreader and
everyone who was anyone reading news was running Unix and we all
understood what was meant when someone said something like /Jenkins/:f,
and ths like. Yes, I was one of them at the time. So much of the
terminology from those times still hangs round in Usenet news.

Adrian (still using rn, or rather its successor trn)

--
Adrian Shaw ais@
Adran Cyfrifiadureg, Prifysgol Cymru, aber.
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Cymru ac.
http://users.aber.ac.uk/ais/weather/ uk