@rl_dane @SpaceLifeForm
Same here.

So it's an overstatement, but there's also truth to it. Originally it was far more widely useful than it is today.

BTW different systems that I use seem to vary as to whether ping must be run as superuser (the others probably have the su-bit set), but someone posted yesterday about some hack to build and send ping packets without needing to be superuser.

Go figure.