To confirm network connectivity, which command-line tool is commonly used?

• A. Ping
• B. Tracert
• C. Nslookup
• D. Netstat

Answer: (A)

Verifying reachability between devices is commonly done with ping. Ping sends a small ICMP Echo Request to the target and waits for an Echo Reply, giving a quick yes/no on whether the destination can be reached and how long the round trip takes. This makes it a fast, practical check for basic connectivity and latency. However, some networks block ICMP, so a ping failure might not prove there's no path; it just means ICMP traffic isn’t allowed. Other tools serve different purposes: traceroute shows the path and each hop to the destination, useful for locating where a problem occurs; DNS lookup tools resolve hostnames to IPs, which is about name resolution rather than confirming connectivity; netstat lists active connections and listening ports on the local machine, not testing reachability of a remote device.