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Once in a while you may try to get together with an old buddy and play some sort of video game across the internet. As a way of troubleshooting, you may end up relying on trusty ol’ ping. Ping can lead you astray. This post is not about troubleshooting why you can’t get the games to connect, but rather discussing the problem with using ping to trouble shoot.

If both computers are behind a router, such as the linksys wireless routers that are fairly popular, ping may simply timeout.

If this is the case, your games should still play. If they do not play, the problem is probably something else, and you shouldn’t worry about getting ping to work as a pre-requisite.

Many routers, including the linksys routers, will block anonymous internet requests by default. This will block pings without blocking other sorts of content (web browsing, peer-to-peer downloading, and games).  If the router is configured to block anonymous internet requests, using ping as a method of troubleshooting will only lead you astray and waste your time.

Checking to see if your router blocks anonymous internet requests will vary from router to router, but here’s how to do it on most linksys routers.

1. Goto the Router Admin Page
   • usually http://192.168.1.1
   • provide the admin login credentials. Linksys is by default username: admin, password: admin
2. Goto the Security tab.
3. Goto the Firewall sub-tab
4. Check of Uncheck ‘Block Anonymous Internet Requests’.

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