Ping is basic — what are the alternatives?

Almost every Software Engineer would have come across this handy tool(ping) at least few times in his/her life. But it looks like stone age tool now, what are the better alternatives?

Alternatives for Checking Reachability:

• hping3 -c 5 -S www.example.com: Sends 5 custom TCP SYN packets to www.example.com. Useful for testing firewall rules or checking if a web…