The thing I don't like about pinging certain hosts like google.com (and a few others) is the return ping from them to your ip address a few hours after you pinging them. Sure, in the grand scheme of things thats a massive {shrug} "So what?" to some and I would agree.

It's the principle of it that I object to. So on the basis of "...fair, Your server/service, Your rules" I just avoid pinging those hosts that do this out of pure principle.

(Am pretty certain that Shodan is another one that does it, especially from IPv6 sources and from memory maybe bbc.com/bbc.co.uk does it too (it's been a while and can't remember the other few that I've seen that do this when checking firewall logs) Other HN'ers might know of some others that do this too.

I mean - Why? It's just darn rude.

[Edit, meant to add that I know why Shodan does this and it is too help them map the IPv6 address space, so Doubly F.U.]

O.T. Alert: Out of habbit I always ping a known i.p address first then pinging a $.com to double check. It's always a head-desk moment when you've spent X minutes checking the code (I mean, it pinged out ok so that can't be the source of the timeouts and errors right?) before trying a ping to a $.com. The head-Desk moment was of course realising the network errors weren't in the code but that the FW dropping any traffic on port 53. Lol (not).