[Arthur McGowan]

And I’m still not clear what a “ping” is. I don’t think anyone ever actually explained it to me.

[null and void]

Ah. Well. We stole it fair and square from Tom Clancey.

In The Hunt For Red October, he had a submariner use a a single sonar ping to signal another.

“Ping” became shorthand for “calling someone over to look at and/or participate in a thread”.

I suppose we could have called it a “call” or a “wave” or something else, but Ping is what became popular.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

Originally about nine years ago, I was communicating with Billie and I was trying to coax the dreaded Navigator to the thread. Much like Alec Baldwin in Red October, I issued a single “PING” on the thread directed at Navigator. I still have the original posting as I saved the thread (on discette) and I just may post it to my homepage sometime. That, I believe, is the earliest use of a ‘ping’ at FR.

[Billthedrill]

And I’m still not clear what a “ping” is.

Oh. A "ping" is an ICMP packet sent to see if a device at the destination IP address answers with a return packet, called - I'm not making this up - a "pong."

:-)