If 1.1.1.1 fails, I will try 8.8.8.8

I don’t use this one, because I remember when long, long ago it was in some random IP address block belonging to someone, and this particular address didn’t reply to ping.

Likely for good reason, even back then there would have bound to be lots of misconfigured endpoints trying to access 1.1.1.1, so just blocking it at the earliest point possible kept at lot of the annoyance away. Nowadays, it’s an anycast address, so it’s slightly less bad.

But for me, old habits die hard.

> 1.1.1.1

Pinging such an address is inherently a troublesome practice. This address, like many public DNS servers (resolvers as well as root and authoritative ones), uses "anycast" routing methodology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anycast

Pinging an anycast address will yield a cornucopia of different results. Of course, people who naïvely "ping" a recognizable or easy-to-type IPv4 address get what they deserve, especially when they enshrine it into software, unit tests, or the LLM coughs up such tokens on their behalf.

Fundamentally, the question is "what do you really want to test?" by pinging a particular IPv4? Do you want to test Layer 3 connectivity? Test your ISP's backbone and connectivity? Test only your upstream router? Test the existence of ICMP in your stack and theirs?

... the possibilities are endless. Your router can do anything. Ping zombo.com.