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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T09:30:22+00:00

I can ping google from my local machine, but can anyone tell me why

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I can ping google from my local machine, but can anyone tell me why I might be getting “false” when I run the following in IRB on the same machine? Really frustrating as a ping is supposed to be the most simple network op and I just can’t get it to work!

1.9.2-p290 :001 > require "net/ping"
 => true 
1.9.2-p290 :003 > pinger = Net::Ping::External.new("http://www.google.com")
 => #<Net::Ping::External:0x88eac30 @host="http://www.google.com", @port=7, @timeout=5, @exception=nil, @warning=nil, @duration=nil> 
1.9.2-p290 :004 > pinger.ping
 => false 
1.9.2-p290 :005 >
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The following is not a valid host/domain name (although it is a valid URL):

    http://www.google.com

    Thus, the DNS resolution will fail and, having no target IP, no ping can be sent.

    I’m sure you didn’t use that exact host for the command-line ping 🙂 As Gareth notes, doing so would look similar to:

    $ ping http://www.google.com
ping: cannot resolve http://www.google.com: Unknown host

    A “normal ping”, which is being attempted here, and an “HTTP ping” are different. Contrast this usage with Net::Ping::HTTP, which does take a URL, for instance.

    Happy coding.

    (Either “google.com” or “www.google.com” would be suitable host names.)

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