Another tool that can find out if a selected IP address is already on the network is ping. Ping is a harmless way to determine if an address is found on the network, and (if it is found) to receive a reply. Basically, the ping function sends out a request to a specific address to determine if a computing device is connected to the network at that address. If a valid connection is found, then a copy of the signal (that was sent) is returned. If a connection is not found, then the response is “request timed out”, which means that no reply was received from that IP address.