PING Many versions of ping are available.

For the remainder of this discussion, I assume use of BSD UNIX's ping, a freely available, full-featured ping available for many UNIX systems. Most PCbased pings do not have the advanced features I describe. As always, read the manual for whatever version you use. What Ping can tell you Ping places a unique sequence number on each packet it transmits, and reports which sequence numbers it receives back. Thus, you can determine if packets have been dropped, duplicated, or reordered. Ping checksums each packet it exchanges. You can detect some forms of damaged packets. Ping places a timestamp in each packet, which is echoed back and can easily be used to compute how long each packet exchange took - the Round Trip Time (RTT). Ping reports other ICMP messages that might otherwise get buried in the system software. It reports, for example, if a router is declaring the target host unreachable. What Ping can not tell you Some routers may silently discard undeliverable packets. Others may believe a packet has been transmitted successfully when it has not been. (This is especially common over Ethernet, which does not provide link-layer acknowledgments) Therefore, ping may not always provide reasons why packets go unanswered. Ping can not tell you why a packet was damaged, delayed, or duplicated. It can not tell you where this happened either, although you may be able to deduce it. Ping can not give you a blow-by-blow description of every host that handled the packet and everything that happened at every step of the way. It is an unfortunate fact that no software can reliably provide this information for a TCP/IP network. echo-reply (pong) destination-unreachable network-unreachable host-unreachable protocol-unreachable port-unreachable fragmentation-needed source-route-failed network-unknown host-unknown network-prohibited host-prohibited TOS-network-unreachable TOS-host-unreachable communication-prohibited host-precedence-violation

precedence-cutoff source-quench redirect network-redirect host-redirect TOS-network-redirect TOS-host-redirect echo-request (ping) router-advertisement router-solicitation time-exceeded (ttl-exceeded) ttl-zero-during-transit ttl-zero-during-reassembly parameter-problem ip-header-bad required-option-missing timestamp-request timestamp-reply address-mask-request address-mask-reply Picking and dropping ICMP Ping request through Linux iptables: The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) has many messages that are identified by a "type" field. You need to use 0 and 8 ICMP code types. => Zero (0) is for echo-reply => Eight (8) is for echo-request. To enable ICMP ping incoming client request use following iptables rule (you need to add following rules to script). My default firewall policy is blocking everything.

Task: Enable or allow ICMP ping incoming client request

Rule to enable ICMP ping incoming client request ( assuming that default iptables policy is to drop all INPUT and OUTPUT packets)
SERVER_IP="202.54.10.20" iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type 8 -s 0/0 -d $SERVER_IP -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT iptables -A OUTPUT -p icmp --icmp-type 0 -s $SERVER_IP -d 0/0 -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

Task: Allow or enable outgoing ping request

To enable ICMP ping outgoing request use following iptables rule:
SERVER_IP="202.54.10.20" iptables -A OUTPUT -p icmp --icmp-type 8 -s $SERVER_IP -d 0/0 -m state --state NEW,ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -p icmp --icmp-type 0 -s 0/0 -d $SERVER_IP -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

How do I disable outgoing ICMP request?

Use the following rules:
iptables -A OUTPUT -p icmp --icmp-type echo-request -j DROP

OR
iptables -A OUTPUT -p icmp --icmp-type 8 -j DROP

ICMP echo-request type will be block by above rule. For Windows: If you have routing and remote access setup just open it up and go to NAT/BasicFirewall, double click the network card for the external ipaddress, go to ICMP and you will have the choice to disable or able incoming echo request.