I can't ping my website! Is the server down?

If you try to ping your website or any InfinityFree server, you’ll see the ping fail with 100% packet loss. This is completely normal and doesn’t mean your website is down.

On Windows, you’ll see output like this:

> ping example.com
Pinging example.com [185.27.134.??] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 185.27.134.??:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

What should I do instead?

The best way to check if your website is working is simply to visit it in your browser. If your website loads normally, everything is fine regardless of what ping shows.

You can also use online tools like downforeveryoneorjustme.com to check if your site is accessible from different locations.

Why doesn’t ping work on InfinityFree?

InfinityFree servers are configured with firewalls that block ping traffic for security reasons and to prevent exposing network details. The servers deliberately don’t respond to ping requests, even when your website is running perfectly.

This is actually common practice among web hosting providers. Blocking ping traffic helps protect against certain types of network attacks while having no impact on your website’s actual functionality.

What this means for you

Ping failure on InfinityFree hosting is normal and expected. Your website can be completely functional and accessible to visitors even when ping shows 100% packet loss. Focus on whether your website actually loads in a browser rather than relying on ping results.

2 Likes

i dont think pinging will expose details, just response times??

Ping itself only shows the round trip time for the whole journey. Traceroute also shows the steps that are taken by the packet, which can provide details about network topology. And traceroute also makes use of ICMP (ping) packets. So by blocking ping traffic, we also block traceroute.

3 Likes

ah

2 posts were split to a new topic: Chat Website

Aren’t real web requests pings also?

No, they are formatted differently.

4 Likes

No. Web requests use HTTP packets, which runs on TCP (usually), which runs on IP. Ping requests use ICMP, which is a different protocol.

In the OSI model, they are the same on layer 1 and 2, but different in layer 3 and up.

So they are completely different network wise and extremely easy to block or allow separately.

4 Likes