Q. Is there a native PowerShell equivalent of Ping?
A. Ping is a useful utility that tests basic connectivity between machines using ICMP (providing the target machine has the ICMP echo firewall exception enabled that enables it to respond to a ping request). While ping.exe is available in PowerShell there is a PowerShell cmdlet that has equivalent and more functionality; Test-NetConnection.
While ping primarily works using ICMP, Test-NetConnection can test a variety of TCP ports to test workload specific functionality. Basic echo functionality can be used as follows:
PS C:\> Test-NetConnection savdaldc01
ComputerName : savdaldc01
RemoteAddress : 10.7.173.10
InterfaceAlias : Ethernet
SourceAddress : 10.7.173.131
PingSucceeded : True
PingReplyDetails (RTT) : 1 ms
Another example is to test common TCP ports, for example HTTP (port 80)
PS C:\> Test-NetConnection savdalfs01 -CommonTCPPort HTTP
ComputerName : savdalfs01
RemoteAddress : 10.7.173.175
RemotePort : 80
InterfaceAlias : Ethernet
SourceAddress : 10.7.173.131
PingSucceeded : True
PingReplyDetails (RTT) : 0 ms
TcpTestSucceeded : True
It is also possible to test communication on other ports not defined as common ports, for example RDP (port 3389)
PS C:\> Test-NetConnection savdalfs01 -Port 3389
ComputerName : savdalfs01
RemoteAddress : 10.7.173.175
RemotePort : 3389
InterfaceAlias : Ethernet
SourceAddress : 10.7.173.131
PingSucceeded : True
PingReplyDetails (RTT) : 1 ms
TcpTestSucceeded : True
It's also possible to perform a quiet test that will simply return a Boolean status code of true/false based on the success.
Test-NetConnection savdalfs01 -InformationLevel Quiet
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