The ping is one of the most popular tools to diagnose network connectivity problems to remote systems. Ping command is a network tool that can be used with different types of networks and protocols. Today the internet and network infrastructure mainly use IPv4 as a network layer but the next generation IPv6 is increasing its popularity. The ping command can be used for both IPv4 and IPv6. In this tutorial, we will learn how to ping an IPv6 target system in different operating systems like Windows, Linux, and MacOS.
Ping IPv6 In Windows
The Windows ping command provides support for the IPv6 with IP address and hostname. We can provide the IPv6 address directly to the ping command. In order for the IPv6 ping command to work, the network configuration should support and enable the IPv6 configuration. From the given interface properties the Internet Protocol Version 6 should be enabled like below. But in most cases, this is enabled by default.
We can ping the provided IPv6 address with the regular ping command like below. In the following example, we will ping the Ipv6 address 2620:119:35::35 .
> ping 2620:119:35::35If we want to ping a domain name with its IPv6 address the ping command option -6 can be used to force to ping IPv6 address.
> ping -6 www.wisetut.comIf we can not ping an IPv6 address just check to ping localhost with the IPv6 address. The localhost IPv6 address is ::1 .
> ping ::1
IPv6 In Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, CentOS, RHEL)
The Linux operating system also provides the ping command in order to send ICMP or ping packets to the IPv6 targets. It is very the same with the Windows ping command. Just provide the IPv6 address to the ping command without any extra option.
$ ping 2620:119:35::35Alternatively, we can provide the hostname of the remote target system and ping by using the IPv6 protocol.
$ ping -6 www.wisetut.comThe Linux distributions also provide an alias for the ping command with the IPv6 option which is ping6 . It can be used as below.
$ ping6 www.wisetut.comPing IPv6 In MacOSX
The MacOSX operating system for all its versions provides the ping6 command to ping IPv6 addresses.
$ ping6 2620:119:35::35Ping IPv6 In Cisco (IOS)
Cisco provides the ping command in exec mode in order to check connectivity to the IPv6 targets. The ping command requires ipv6 parameter and the IPv6 address of the target.
# ping ipv6 2620:119:35::35