How to ping from a BlackBerry Tour

Any computer user who has ever tried to troubleshoot a network connectivity issue is probably familiar with the "ping" command.  Ping sends a quick message from your computer to the computer you specify, just asking for a reply.  Assuming the request can make it over the network (or Internet) to the destination computer, and assuming the destination computer isn't prevented from receiving the request or replying by either a firewall or a security policy, that computer will send a reply back to you, and you can verify the connection between the two computers.

If you have a BlackBerry Tour, you can send ping requests directly from the Tour, in addition to sending them from your computer.  To use the ping command from your BlackBerry Tour, follow these steps:

A.  From the main screen, press the BlackBerry button (the one with seven dots to the left of the trackball) to get to your Home folder.

B.  Scroll down until you see the Options folder (with the wrench icon) and select it.

C.  Scroll down to Mobile Network and click on it.

D.  Press the BlackBerry button again to bring up additional options

E.  Scroll down to Tools, and either click on it or move the trackball to the right.

F.  From the list of available commands, select Ping.

Now you should see the Ping screen.  From here you can send ping commands as well as set the parameters you want to use.  By default, a ping command will send four requests of 32 bytes each, but you can change either of those settings if you want.

To send a ping, type in the destination you want to ping, either as an IP address (for example, 192.168.1.8) or as a domain name (like yahoo.com).  Then hit the BlackBerry button and choose Send Ping.

If the pings are successful, you will see "Success!" displayed on the screen, along with the time it took the destination computer to respond.  If the pings do not go through, you will see either the "Ping request timeout" error (which means the destination couldn't be reached) or the "A network error occured" message (which could mean either the destination you entered was invalid or there is a connectivity problem somewhere).  Either way, at the bottom of the screen you'll also see a breakdown of how many of the attempted pings went through successfully and what their average travel time was.

The ping command screen is also where you can view your BlackBerry's IP address, if you ever need to look it up.

(Originally posted on Helium.com, July 2010)