Question 1

Can this tool send real ICMP ping packets from my browser?

Accepted Answer

No. Browsers cannot send raw ICMP echo requests — that requires the OS CLI. This tool is honest about that. It generates ready-to-paste `ping` commands for Windows (`ping -n `), Linux/macOS (`ping -c `) with interval, timeout, payload-size, flood and no-resolve flags, and it generates the equivalent browser HTTP fetch-timing plan that uses `performance.now()` and the PerformanceResourceTiming API to time HTTPS round-trips. Run the CLI command in your terminal for real ICMP; paste the resulting RTTs (or use the in-browser fetch timing) into the stats calculator.

Question 2

What statistics does the calculator compute?

Accepted Answer

From a list of RTT samples (in milliseconds) it computes: count, success/failed, packet-loss percentage (failed / total × 100), min, max, average (arithmetic mean), standard deviation (population, sqrt of mean squared deviation from mean), and jitter (mean of absolute differences between consecutive samples: mean(|rtt[i+1] − rtt[i]|)). It also bins the RTTs into a configurable histogram and exports samples and stats as CSV.

Question 3

Why does the browser HTTP timing sometimes show inflated numbers?

Accepted Answer

Three honest reasons. (1) First request pays the DNS + TLS + TCP handshake cost — use the warm-up option to discard the first sample. (2) HTTP caching skews subsequent requests toward zero — the tool always appends a cache-busting `_=<timestamp>` query param and sends `cache: 'no-store'` + `mode: 'no-cors'`. (3) CORS-blocked hosts still resolve and connect but throw on the response — the tool catches the error and keeps the timing, marking the sample as ok=false but recording the RTT. This is not ICMP and never will be; it's an HTTP round-trip measure.

Question 4

What ping flags are supported in the generated commands?

Accepted Answer

Windows `tracert`-style `ping`: `-n ` (count), `-w ` (timeout), `-l ` (payload size), `-t` (ping forever until Ctrl-C), `-4`/`-6` (force IPv4/IPv6), `-a` (resolve addresses to hostnames), `-f` (don't fragment). Linux/macOS `ping`: `-c `, `-i ` (interval), `-W ` Linux / `-W ` macOS (timeout), `-s ` (payload size), `-f` (flood, root only), `-n` (no DNS resolve), `-4`/`-6`, `-q` (quiet summary), `-D` (timestamps).

Question 5

What extra features does this tool have versus other ping sites?

Accepted Answer

(1) Honest ICMP-vs-HTTP disclosure. (2) ping command generator for Windows / Linux / macOS with 10+ flags. (3) Browser fetch-timing plan generator using PerformanceResourceTiming (cache-bust + no-store + no-cors + warm-up). (4) Pure stats engine: count, loss%, min, max, avg, population stddev, jitter (RFC 3550 mean packet-delay variation). (5) Configurable histogram with auto-bucketing. (6) CSV export of samples + stats. (7) Latency classification (fast/good/moderate/slow). (8) Multi-target presets (Google DNS, Cloudflare, AWS, your own). (9) localStorage history (max 20). (10) Shareable URL with full config round-trip. (11) Live fetch runner in the UI with a sparkline chart. 100% client-side logic — the stats and command generators never send a packet.

Ping & Latency Tester (Browser)

ICMP ping command

How to use

ICMP ping command