PING Finally Exposed

For the Blackberry addicts among us PING needs no introduction.  We have used PING and we have been PINGED or should I say PANG in fairness to the English Language.  I bet you don't have a clue what PING is much less how it works or why it is used. I bet you are not interested to know what it is; But you will be surprised how much you gain from this bit of Discovery.  Lets go on a journey

PING is primarily used in computer Networking as a utility to check the availability of another computer or host in an IP network.  By IP Network we mean the regular internet as we know it. PING therefore allows the sender to decern the availability of a host computer or device.  It also measures the time it take for the message to reach the destination and back to the sender - known as the round trip time.  In addition, it records how many packets are lost in the process.

In the BBM world PING basically does the same thing.  It checks how long the data takes to get delivered. It is also a way of testing the synchronicity of your conversation in blackberry messenger. For example, if your ping is 1000ms or one second it means your're receiving messages one second too late.  PING on Computer (IP) networks are of the order of a few Milli-seconds.  The Blackberry Network may use the IP network or a mixture of both IP and GSM or other mobile systems.

The name PING derives from sonar terminology and was first introduced in 1983 by Mike Muus.  According to Muus it was named after the sound that a sonar makes, inspired by echo-location.  Dolphins I believe navigate by echo-location making sharp clicking sounds that return after hitting their target.  The characteristics of the return signal provides information for the Dolphin to interpret. 

Bats are also adept users of this technique. It was found out in the 1930s that bats use high pitched sounds like a natural sonar to locate food and navigate. When these sounds bounce off of objects bats are capable of listening to these echoes and are able to judge distance, movement and size of all objects in their path.

Many Network professionals like to make an acronym of the term PING, calling it Packet INternet Groper.  Muus definitely did not like this, and has been known to disambiguate this "bacronym" as he calls it.   

PING uses a Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo requests to the target host and waits for an ICMP response. The results of the test is displayed in summary with information such as the Round trip time, minimum, maximum and mean times including the lossed packets.

PING has been know to have malicious uses as with almost every good thing in computer networking.  The most common of this is a denial of service attack which is akin to a PING flood where the attacker floods the victim with ICMP echo requests packets overwhelming the host.  

Some hosts have been known to filter out ICMP echo request in the form of PING, sighting the possibility of security threats.  We recall the popular internet worm Welchia which used PING request to find new computers to infect.

Despite the long history and the cons associated with PING it remains at the top of Network troubleshooting.  It is the first port of call, the 911 of computer networks and the screams of the BBM messengers. 

For more on the PING utility you can visit The Story of the PING Program

The Incredible Evolution of Mobile Phones

(a brief account of the developments in mobile technology)

The history of mobile phones can be traced as far back as 1910 when Lars Magnus Ericsson experimented with a phone in his car, connecting to the fixed line telephone network.  This was by no means mobile but the idea was to start a revolutionary telecommunications trend. 

Fast Forward to the 1950’s and we would have seen Ericsson developed the first fully automatic mobile phone system released commercially in Sweden 1956.  It was called the MTA (mobile system A) and weighed in at a whopping 40kg (90lbs) - So much for a mobile phone. 

Evolution of mobile phones (source WIKI) 

Meanwhile in the U.S. Martin Cooper (pictured below), a Motorolla researcher and executive was credited as the inventor of the first practical mobile phone for handheld use in a non-vehicle setting.  He is said to have made the first call on a handheld mobile phone on April 3, 1973 to his rival, Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell labs.

The preceding decades saw significant improvements in the technology and as a direct benefit from transistor technology the size and weight of phones decreased greatly.  Tokyo, Japan welcomed the first automated commercial cellular network (NTT) in 1979 to be followed in 1981 by simultaneous launch of the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland.  

The First Generation (1G) network saw its beginings in the USA as the Chicago based Ameritech launched in 1983 using the Motorola DynaTAC mobile phones.  Several countries later came on board in the mid 1980's including Mexico, UK and Canada.

In the 90’s we saw second generation (2G) mobile systems like GSM, IS-136 (TDMA) and IS-95 (CDMA) rolled out with reasonable acceptance in the developed world. This soon caught on with the developing world as new markets opened up at the turn of the 90’s.  

The global user base grew even faster with the introduction of the Third Generation (3G) mobile technologies.  This is the International Mobile Telecommunications – 2000 (IMT -2000) family of standards defined by the ITU (International Telecommunications Union).  They include GSM EDGE, UMTS, and CDMA2000.  The 3G standards represents greater capabilities including higher speeds/Data Rates (up to 14.0 Mbit/s), simultaneous voice, data and video services, and a variety of different applications. We can readily relate to these technology advances when we pick up our Blackberry, Android or I-Phone handsets to check emails, browse the web, shop and even watch a live Football match.  

The Fourth Generation (4G) systems are already being marketed and rolled out by some companies.  This offers even greater capabilities and consequently demands an enhanced infrastructure to manage the large data rate of 125 Mbps.  The ITU defines these as the IMT-Advanced standards as a follow up from the IMT-2000.  The third generation partnership project (3GPP) calls it the LTE-Advanced and was expected to roll out the full 4G technology by 2011.  

Wimax with its mobile wireless broadband standard (IEEE 802.16e-2005) is often branded as 4G technology, although not purely so.  The IMT-Advanced Wimax 4G standard IEEE 802.16m (Advanced Air Interface with data rates of 100 Mbps mobile and 1 Gbps fixed) is however in progress.  In the Caribbean we know that Wimax modems are offered by Digicel  and LIME(Jamaica) and by BMobile Trinidad.


The WHO Fact Sheet No. 193 (May 2010) states that there are currently 4.6 billion mobile subscriptions globally referring to the end of 2009 when measurements were last taken.  This number has and will continue to grow as new infrastructures are being rolled out daily.  


In some parts of the world mobile phones are the only or the most reliable form of telecommunication.  We have come a far way from when legacy PSTN (public switched telephone service) used to dominate telecommunications to a new era where mobile cellular telephone subscriptions has surpassed fixed telephone lines (PSTN) since 2002

ICT Trends 2000 - 2010 (Source ITU)

We know that Tablets and Netbooks have entered the market vigorously and the argument is that they offer similar mobility and could be included in the numbers. It would be incredible, the  numbers if we classify those subscriptions together with mobile cellular telephones.  


The distinction has to be made though that mobile cellular telephone subscriptions refer to the basic bearer services such as telephone and SMS/MMS and supplementary services such as voicemail, call waiting etc. that do not require a smart phone.   Mobile Broadband subscription on the other hand refers to the data services that are coupled with the basic services on devices that are capable of broadband communications.  These include the Wimax and commercial WIFI. 


Mobile phones continue to lead the way in terms of subscriptions and penetration but mobile broadband subscription will see a similarly sharp growth in the coming years. 


As we continue to monitor the growth of Mobile Phone Technologies we are left to wonder how far it will peak and the impacts it will have on how we live.  Will it be superseded by some other revolutionary technology or will it evolve to remain the leader in connecting people and communities? 


Some Other Interesting Facts (Source ITU):


The ITU says there are now 5.3 billion mobile cellular subscriptions across the world, including 940 million subscriptions to mobile broadband services, a figure which is tipped to reach one billion before the end of this year.

The ITU rReport says access to mobile networks is now available to 90 per cent of the world's population overall. Of people living in rural areas, 80 per cent now have mobile cellular coverage.

Two billion videos are watched every day on YouTube, while five billion photos are now hosted on Flickr.