PingER: The Forgotten Pioneer That Tracked the Internet’s Growth
📡 Ever heard of ?
Most people credit commercial tools like ThousandEyes or Kentik with internet performance monitoring. But the real pioneer? (Ping End-to-end Reporting). Pingher
Respect the OGs of network observability. 👏 #Networking #InternetHistory #PingER
Launched in 1995 by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, PingER was one of the first systems to actively measure internet health across international borders—long before “network observability” was a buzzword. PingER: The Forgotten Pioneer That Tracked the Internet’s
They say the internet is a series of tubes. But how do you actually measure if those tubes are working? 🚰📡
You don’t always need complex agents. Sometimes, a well-placed ping tells you everything. Option 2: Twitter / X (Short & Punchy) (Ping End-to-end Reporting)
Without PingER, we wouldn’t have the same understanding of the digital divide or the tools to monitor global networks. Next time you run a speed test, thank a 30-year-old ping. ❤️ If by “Pingher” you meant a person, a place, a brand, or something else entirely (e.g., a nickname, a typo for “Pincher” or “Ping He”), just let me know and I’ll rewrite the post from scratch.
Before Cloudflare, before RIPE Atlas—there was PingER (1995). It measured internet health across 160+ countries with nothing but ICMP pings.
Meet — one of the earliest global internet measurement projects (started in 1995 at SLAC). It sent tiny pings around the world to measure lag and packet loss, helping scientists see where the internet was fast… and where it wasn’t.