A common use of the ping program is to time a connection to a remote machine.
Here is an example using ping to time the connection to bitsy.mit.edu. The command typed by the the user is shown with a light blue background.
csdev03 22% ping -s bitsy.mit.edu PING bitsy.mit.edu: 56 data bytes 64 bytes from BITSY.MIT.EDU (18.72.0.3): icmp_seq=0. time=57. ms 64 bytes from BITSY.MIT.EDU (18.72.0.3): icmp_seq=1. time=56. ms 64 bytes from BITSY.MIT.EDU (18.72.0.3): icmp_seq=2. time=58. ms 64 bytes from BITSY.MIT.EDU (18.72.0.3): icmp_seq=3. time=57. ms 64 bytes from BITSY.MIT.EDU (18.72.0.3): icmp_seq=4. time=56. ms 64 bytes from BITSY.MIT.EDU (18.72.0.3): icmp_seq=5. time=56. ms 64 bytes from BITSY.MIT.EDU (18.72.0.3): icmp_seq=6. time=57. ms 64 bytes from BITSY.MIT.EDU (18.72.0.3): icmp_seq=7. time=56. ms 64 bytes from BITSY.MIT.EDU (18.72.0.3): icmp_seq=8. time=57. ms ^C ----bitsy.mit.edu PING Statistics---- 9 packets transmitted, 9 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip (ms) min/avg/max = 56/56/58