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I tried using the ping command on a https page, but the message says that ping could not find the host. Is there some issue regarding ping and https?

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Short answer: Ping and HTTPS have nothing in common. Ping is a low level network tool whereas HTTPS is an application layer protocol (or rather, an URI scheme). – slhck Aug 22 '11 at 13:35
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If you want to test that you ssl site is responding correctly use openssl this way: "openssl s_client -connect google.com:443" Then you can issue a GET command followed by two presses on the return key like this: "GET / HTTP/1.1" – Shadok Aug 22 '11 at 14:03
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up vote 7 down vote accepted

The answear to your question(Can you get a reply from a HTTPS site using the Ping command?) is Yes, you can, as long as ICMP replies are enabled on the HTTPs site provider. However, it have nothing to do with HTTP or HTTPS:

Ping will use ICMP protocol, it belongs to TCP/IP Internet Layer, which is a lower layer than HTTP or HTTPs(from Application Layer):

Ping operates by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request packets to the target host and waiting for an ICMP response. In the process it measures the time from transmission to reception (round-trip time)1 and records any packet loss. The results of the test are printed in form of a statistical summary of the response packets received, including the minimum, maximum, and the mean round-trip times, and sometimes the standard deviation of the mean.

You can test with "cmd"(Windows Start button / type cmd on search box, open "cmd.exe"), then with ping:

ping www.hotmail.com

If you try to ping a http URL, such it follows:

ping http://www.hotmail.com

You will get the same error that you would get if trying to ping a https based url:

ping https://www.hotmail.com

(An error something like that ping cant reach the requested adress will appear on both attempts).

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up vote 3 down vote

ping works at a much lower level than HTTP or HTTPS, and only accepts hostnames, not URLs. For example:

ping www.google.com
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