Main tool (PingER) currently uses Ping
Treats Internet as black box
Provides useful real world measures of network round trip response time, loss, reachability, jitter
Low cost/lightweight tool
- ping “universally available”, easy to understand
- no software for clients to install
- no special privileges needed for monitor sites
- resources: 100bps/link, ~600kBytes/month/link
Agrees well with more complex measurements