Some rumors say that, lately, Google started to consider the speed of every site when awarding a ranking, so knowing how fast is yours when compared to the competition is a good action to take, before anything else. On the other hand, I think this is only a rumor, but anyway – knowing how fast is your server is still useful. After all, we all pay for our hosting plans, so we should know exactly what we get, right?
The free ping tool for Windows I just bumped into is called PingMaster and comes from AgataSoft, a company that released a few freebies and commercial programs so far. To download PingMaster, just go to this page and click the corresponding download link (the setup package has only 550KB). To use it… just install the thing, give it a go, and do what it takes, it’s as easy as 1-2-3!
No, I am not joking here! All you have to do is add the hosts to check (up to 5, unfortunately), set the maximum timeout and delay values, press the Start button, and let it run… Think about running this program continuously and saving the log to a file. Pretty useful when you say that your site was down, and the hosting company says it wasn’t!
More than being able to ping various locations, PingMaster also has a traceroute utility and works great with all popular Windows versions, including Vista and 7. Sweeet! 
NICE TOOLS…