Test-Connection is a very powerful PowerShell Cmdlet which sends ICMP Packets to test the reachability of a host. Like ping. But Test-Connection is much more. Let’s play with the new ping command.

Ping multiple Hosts

Unlike ping you can test the connection to multiple hosts. Separate them by comma.

Test-Connection www.sid-500.com,192.168.0.105

Shut Up Mode

The world is loud enough 😉 The following example shows how to run Test-Connection in Quiet Mode which results in suppressing details.

Test-Connection sid-500.com,192.168.0.105 -Quiet

True oder False. In this case both hosts are reachable.

Different Sources

When using ping the source is always localhost. But the good news is: You can specify a Source Computer.

Note, that i am logged on server03 as a member of the Domain-Admins group. I set the source to dc01 and ping server03. Reverse Ping 😉

Test-Connection -Source dc01 -Destination server03

By the way: ::1 is the IPv6 localhost address same as 127.0.0.0/8 in IPv4.

Further Information

Test-Connection tests the connectivity to a remote host. See also my blog post about Test-NetConnection: PowerShell: Playing with Test-NetConnection (ping, tracert, TCP Ports …)

For checking domain connectivity and name resolution see my articles

Checking connectivity to Active Directory: Test-ComputerSecureChannel and

The new nslookup: Resolve-DnsName