How to do a Ping Test on a Mac

To do a ping test on Mac, please follow some steps below:

Open a Finder window on your Mac. You can do this by clicking the half-blue, half-gray face icon in your Dock
Click "Applications" in the left sidebar. If you don’t see this option in your left sidebar, you can also hit the Command + A keys on your keyboard from any Finder window.
Open the "Utilities" folder and the "Terminal" app
Type ping followed by a space and the DNS address
Hit "Enter" on your keyboard and wait for the results.
Finally, hit Control + C on your keyboard to stop the ping test.

Each time you do a ping test on a Mac, you will see the ping time in milliseconds (ms) and how many packets were received or lost. You will also see the minimum, average, maximum, and standard deviation ping response times.

Here are the most common error messages you will see if your ping test returned failed results:

Request timeout: This means the ping test took longer than the default limit of 4,000 milliseconds (4 seconds). This could be caused by network congestion, a firewall set to stop specific traffic, defective cables or ports, and more.
Host is down: This error message means that the requested host name is not responding. Check that the name is entered correctly and that your router is functioning properly. If you are having problems with your router, check out our guide on how to reset your router here.
TTL expired in transit: The TTL you see before your ping time for each test refers to the number of “hops” that your packet is allowed to make before being discarded. So, this error message means that your packet exceeded the maximum number of allowable hops.

If you see one of these failure indicators, you would need to troubleshoot network issues. Moreover, if the remote device does not respond to the packets you sent, try to ping devices in other locations. This would help you determine whether the problem is with the remote device or with your network connection.