3150: Ping

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 17:14, 3 October 2025 by 2600:4040:99d4:8b00:a0be:c309:d18b:3d47 (talk) (→‎Explanation: Link to ICMP)
Jump to: navigation, search
Ping
Progress on getting shipwrecked sailors to adopt ICMPv6 has been slow.
Title text: Progress on getting shipwrecked sailors to adopt ICMPv6 has been slow.

    Explanation

    Ambox warning blue construction.svg This is one of 52 incomplete explanations:
    This page was created recently. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

    This comic shows a message in a bottle on the beach, much like 1675: Message in a Bottle.

    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.

    Transcript

    Ambox warning green construction.svg This is one of 27 incomplete transcripts:
    Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!
    [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.]

    comment.png  Add comment      new topic.png  Create topic (use sparingly)     refresh discuss.png  Refresh 

    Discussion

    Should we include links to the other impractical internet protocol comics? (like the one where he has to rebuild civilization for every ping, or the one where they're using neutrinos to send messages?)2602:FF4D:128:D56:B3E5:923E:8846:D13 17:24, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

    Or create a category for networking protocols? Barmar (talk) 17:27, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
    I second that. Agf (talk) 19:15, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
    Here are those that I've found that would match this category ("weird communication mediums" - the neutrinos router doesn't fit the "impractical internet protocols"): 3017, 1789 (unsure), 454, 190, 1142 (unsure), 2949, 269, 1254 (Edit: all those without (unsure) have been added.) Agf (talk) 20:04, 3 October 2025 (UTC)
    Ok, so I didn't see this before I saw the first redlink category added and unadded it with a suggestion to talk about it.
    But it needs more discussion than this. And I'd advise thinking a lot more (as a group) about the actual name of the category. Barmar seems to have a slightly different idea as a name, for example. And could it be "weird" or "unorthodox" or "impractical" or ... YGTI. Get some sort of wider consensus, please. 81.179.195.93 21:26, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

    Little did the shipwrecked sailor know, but the headers were forged and he was duped into participating in the slowest forged-ping-based DDOS ever. 2603:8081:9700:11:0:0:0:2 17:32, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

    Minor variation of the 1990-04-01 RFC1149 classic. --2001:A62:598:F01:500E:58A5:4DF9:A701 17:44, 3 October 2025 (UTC)

    The serious tone of that entire article in combination with the topic makes it the funniest article I ever read on Wikipedia. I need to check the comments under the explanations more often. It's like another layer of treasures to discover after reading the comic itself... Thank you for making my day better. 46.34.229.216 18:08, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

    You could argue that the oldest ever found message in a bottle was part of a very slow PING-experiment. Because the finders were asked to mail the included postcard. But replying by throwing the bottle back into the ocean would defy the whole experiment. -- Semon (talk) 11:25, 4 October 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

    I have been conducting 'message-in-a-bottle' experiments for decades, with zero success to this point. I'm beginning to suspect that flushing them down the toilet might not reach my intended audience. These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 01:04, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

    Surely flushing should ensure that you are getting it to the right destination? 82.13.184.33 10:10, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

    Given the shape of the shoreline here, I think it's clearly Cueball who is the shipwrecked sailor here. That is (IMHO) the essential humour of the comic: Cueball is unphased by finding the bottle and responds in kind with hardly a second's thought. He'll wait until a proper message gets through to be rescued... 2A01:CB08:E6:7000:1D91:1081:A3D0:49D5 18:49, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

    What are the chances that ICMP in this case stands for Inter-Continental Message Protocol? 151.186.179.27 01:17, 15 October 2025 (UTC)
          comment.png  Add comment
    Retrieved from "https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=3150:_Ping&oldid=388052"