What is the difference between a ping and a get request? The goal is to see if the site is up.
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Question is vague, could do with a lot more detail to get a good answer.– EightBitTonyJun 21, 2011 at 17:56
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4 Answers
Ping only checks if the remote host is answering ICMP packets, which (usually) means it's up and running; but this doesn't give you any information about which services the host is actually offering.
An HTTP GET request checks that there is a web server running on the host, that it answers to a given IP/port/hostname combo, that you asked it for a valid URL and that the web site is able to answer your request.
Example: if IIS (or Apache) is stopped on the host, it will very well answer a Ping request, but a HTTP GET will fail.
ping checks purely for an end-to-end network connection (ICMP). get (assuming you mean wget, or something similar) checks to see if an application is listening and can respond on the end of that network connection.
I've assumed you mean a network ping and not some kind of application ping, but your query is pretty vague.
answered Jun 21, 2011 at 17:55
Ping is a network packet at Layer 4 of the OSI Model, while GET is HTTP at Layer 6 with the presentation aspects of the HTTP application protocol.
Ping checks networking functionality, while GET will include the OS as well as the application protocol aspects - when used during diagnostics/testing.
answered Jun 21, 2011 at 17:59
The L4 utility Ping uses the ICMP protocol and is a function in itself, a L6 http get uses the http/https protocol to grab some data and is a function of the http protocol.
