How does ping resolve ip addresses?

tcp dns ping network-protocols application-layer
user1762571 picture user1762571 · Jun 18, 2013 · Viewed 7.1k times · Source

The ping utility works above the network layer and DNS works in the application layer.

If we try ping www.google.com, how does it resolve the IP address of GOOGLE since the DNS is above these layers?

Answer

paxdiablo picture paxdiablo · Jun 18, 2013

ICMP (the protocol) may operate above IP, alongside TCP but a ping program itself almost certainly still uses the normal methods for name resolution, be that DNS, hosts file or resolv.conf.

For example, the ping program located here calls on gethostbyname() to turn DNS names into IP addresses.

Related questions

Why DNS uses UDP as the transport layer protocol?

Why DNS uses UDP as the transport layer protocol?

Read More
How can I connect to Android with ADB over TCP?

I am attempting to debug an application on a Motorola Droid, but I am having some difficulty connecting to the device via USB. My development server is a Windows 7 64-bit VM running in Hyper-V, and so I cannot connect directly …

Read More
Who is listening on a given TCP port on Mac OS X?

On Linux, I can use netstat -pntl | grep $PORT or fuser -n tcp $PORT to find out which process (PID) is listening on the specified TCP port. How do I get the same information on Mac OS X?

Read More