How to ping an IP address from a Ricoh Aficio MP C4500 multifunction copier

If you have a Ricoh Aficio MP C4500 (or C3500) multifunction copier and it's connected to your local area network, you can use it to ping computers and other devices, just like you would from a Windows command prompt.  Pinging from the copier can be useful if you are trying to troubleshoot a connection issue, or if you want to see which computers or other devices are currently on.

To get to the ping command, press the User Tools/Counter button, to the upper left of the copier's touch screen.  On the menu that appears, touch System Settings, then touch the Interface Settings tab.  Use the arrow in the lower right corner to scroll down to the next page (2/2), and you'll see the Ping Command button on the left side of the screen.  Press it to bring up the Ping utility.

Unlike when you ping from your computer, with the C4500 you can only ping an IP address.  You can't ping a host name or domain name, but if you know the target's IP address, you can ping it that way.  The IP address is defaulted to 0.0.0.0 -- press Change to be able to input the destination IP address.  When you are done typing in the address, press the pound key (#) on the number pad, or the pound symbol on the touch screen to lock in the address.  Then touch Ping.

The ping attempt should only take a second or two.  When you use the ping command in Windows, it sends four ping requests by default, but the C4500 only pings once.  You'll see either "Ping connection was successful" or "Ping connection has failed," depending on the result.

There is also a dedicated ping command you can use to specifically ping your DNS servers.  To use this command, scroll up to the first Interface Settings page and touch DNS Configuration.  If you've already input IP addresses for at least one of your DNS servers (up to three) you can use the Connection Test button to the right of that entry to ping the DNS server.  If the copier can reach that server, you'll see the "Connection to the server was successful" message.  It's a good idea to run the connection test any time you switch DNS servers or after you first set up the copier for network printing or scanning.

Other networked Ricoh copiers can also ping, but the command may be located under a different heading in the menu.  With a little searching, you should be able to find it grouped somewhere with the network configuration settings.

(Originally published on Helium.com, August 2010)