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I was doing a bit of scanning on my network lately. I knew all the hostnames of each computer connected. But whilst pinging one of them ping returned Request timed out.. This is strange as I know the computer is online and that the computer responds correctly to pinging on a different (enterprise) network. Is there something on the computer, my network, or my computer that is messing with this? - That's just a sub-question, I don't expect this to be the main answer.

The real question: Why does this happen? Why does pinging the IP4 address not work?


**EDIT:**

Pinging the Hostname used to default to the IP4 address, but now it defaults to the IP6 address. Why does this happen? But now that it pings using IP6, how come it all of a sudden works?

> ping -6 THE_COMPUTER
Pinging THE_COMPUTER [lengthy IP6 address] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from [lengthy IP6 address]: time=1ms
Reply from [lengthy IP6 address]: time=1ms
Reply from [lengthy IP6 address]: time=1ms
Reply from [lengthy IP6 address]: time=1ms

Ping stats: Sent = 4, Recieved = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss)

But when this is done using IP4 it doesn't work. So there are now two questions:

  • How come IP6 works and not IP4?
  • Why does IP4 not work?
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    Check your firewall settings as different networks have different firewall profiles. E.g. your home network is going to be more relaxed than your enterprise profile (probably pushed by Group Policy) - not sure why a ping would fail, however. Try ping - 4 <the_remote_IP>
    – Kinnectus
    Jun 9, 2014 at 9:18
  • ping -4 <IP_instead_of_hostname> also fails. And now IP6 is starting to be on and off. It seems really strange...
    – TheBrenny
    Jun 9, 2014 at 9:22
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    Try disabling IPv6 from your network adapter and see if you get better results. We have an issue at my work place, with SOME devices on wireless, where IPv6 is the cause of connectivity issues but our network team are unsure of the fix. Most devices work perfectly, the odd few simply won't connect if IPv6 is enabled.
    – Kinnectus
    Jun 9, 2014 at 9:31
  • Strangely, it works. But still only sometimes. I'm getting a better response rate ping IP6 over IP4. Is this just a strange anomaly that has no fix? Does it happen because of a law similar to Faraday's?
    – TheBrenny
    Jun 9, 2014 at 9:39
  • It should work ALL the time. Maybe you have a power setting on either YOUR network adapter, or the remote computer, putting the device to sleep as no network activity? - Most likely the remote machine...
    – Kinnectus
    Jun 9, 2014 at 9:46

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