Thanks for the great response! I am not only a newbie to Smalltalk but also to any sort of network programming. I guess my exposure to 'ping' on other systems was always the ICMP flavor; so I was surprised by this implementation. As Mariano pointed out, the source code in Pharo1.0 indicates port 7: tcpPort := 7. "7 = echo port, 13 = time port, 19 = character generator port" It seems to me that a ping: method should be the ICMP kind, and a ping:port: method should be for the TCP variety. I presume an echo server could be run on ports other than 7 or 10, depending on preference. So maybe the port should be designated by the caller, and not hard-coded into the class method. I see the other reasoning from your response. Thanks again for clarifying this (and educating me). -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Newbie-Does-Socket-ping-addr-work-in-Pharo3-11-8-tp221... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.