What indicates packet loss when using the ping utility?

• A. Missing Echo Reply messages or timeouts indicating some packets were not returned.
• B. High latency
• C. Duplicate replies
• D. Immediate success replies

Answer: (A)

When you run ping, you’re sending a series of Echo Request packets and expecting Echo Replies. Packet loss shows up when some requests never receive a reply, so you’ll see timeouts or no-response entries for those packets, and the final statistics will report a nonzero percentage of packets lost. This directly indicates that some packets didn’t make it back.

High latency means replies took longer, but all requested packets may still be answered, so it doesn’t by itself prove loss. Duplicate replies hint at routing quirks or network issues, not that packets were dropped. Immediate success replies show all packets were answered quickly, which means no packet loss.