Editing 3150: Ping

{{comic
| number    = 3150
| date      = October 3, 2025
| title     = Ping
| image     = ping_2x.png
| imagesize = 603x208px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = Progress on getting shipwrecked sailors to adopt ICMPv6 has been slow.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
This comic shows a message in a bottle on the beach, much like [[1675: Message in a Bottle]].

{{w|ICMP}} is a protocol that's used among other things for "pings" that are used to see if one machine can successfully communicate with another machine. When you send a ping, your computer sends an "Echo request" packet; the receiver sends an "Echo response" message back to the sender (the term "echo" refers to the fact that the data in the request is copied to the response). [[Cueball]] is emulating this same process with the messages in the bottle. However, one difference is that bottles cast into the sea don't have a fixed destination, so there's no assurance (or even expectation) that the response will reach the original sender, nor even that the request had even found the originally intended destination.

The title text references {{w|ICMPv6}}, which is the version of ICMP used with {{w|IPv6}}. Adoption of IPv6 in general has been slow, and the joke in the comic is that shipwrecked sailors using messages in a bottle to try to communicate with the outside world have not adopted this messaging protocol for their pings.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
:[Cueball is walking on a sandy beach near the shore. A bottle is stuck in the sand, presumably from being washed up by the tide.]

:[Cueball has picked up the bottle and is reading the message inside. There is illegible text written beneath the title of the message.]
:Message: ICMP Echo Request

:[Cueball has set the bottle down below him and is now scribbling out a new message. Once again, there is illegible text written beneath the title of the message.]
:Message: ICMP Echo Reply

:[Cueball is walking away from the shore now, having set the bottle back into the sea.]

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]