At a command prompt, which command would you typically use to find out the IP address of a remote computer by its hostname or to verify its IP resolution?

Introduction / Context:
Network administrators often need to quickly determine the IP address associated with a remote host name or to verify that name resolution is working. At a command prompt, several tools are available, but interview questions usually expect you to identify a simple, commonly used command that reveals the remote IP address in practice. Understanding which tools show local configuration versus remote resolution is important for basic troubleshooting.

Given Data / Assumptions:

• We are using a typical command line environment such as Windows Command Prompt or a similar shell.
• The remote computer is known by a hostname such as server1 or example.com.
• Name resolution (DNS or local host files) maps hostnames to IP addresses.
• We want to see what IP address the system resolves for that remote hostname.

Concept / Approach:
The ping command sends ICMP Echo Request messages to a specified hostname or IP address and displays the resolved IP address in its output. When you type ping server1, the command first resolves server1 to an IP address and then shows that address at the top of the output along with round trip times. Although ping’s primary purpose is to test reachability and latency, it is widely used to quickly check what IP address a given hostname resolves to. Other commands like ipconfig show only local addresses, while commands like format or shutdown are unrelated to IP resolution.

Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: Identify that we need a command that accepts a hostname and reveals the associated IP address. Step 2: Recognize that ping hostname will cause the system to perform DNS or local file lookup to resolve the hostname. Step 3: Observe that the ping output prints the resolved IP address in the first line, for example Pinging server1 [192.168.1.20]. Step 4: Conclude that ping is a simple and effective way to discover or confirm the remote IP address from the hostname. Step 5: Compare with ipconfig, which only shows the local machine’s interface addresses and not the remote host’s address.

Verification / Alternative check:
Running ping example.com on a typical system displays a line such as Pinging example.com [93.184.216.34] with 32 bytes of data, clearly showing the resolved IP address in brackets. If name resolution fails, ping will indicate that the host could not be found. Other tools like nslookup or dig can also display DNS records, but ping is the simplest and most commonly referenced in basic interview questions about viewing a remote IP address from the command line.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Option B refers to ipconfig, which reports the local computer’s IP configuration such as assigned addresses, gateways, and DNS servers, but does not show remote host addresses. Option C, format, is a disk management command with no relation to networking. Option D, shutdown, is used to shut down or restart systems and does not display IP addresses for remote hosts.

Common Pitfalls:
A common mistake is to rely only on ping to check both name resolution and reachability; if ICMP is blocked by firewalls, ping may fail even though DNS resolution is correct. Another pitfall is overlooking more advanced tools like nslookup or dig for detailed DNS diagnostics. For quick checks in many environments, however, ping hostname is the fastest way to see what IP address a remote name is resolving to.

Final Answer:
You would typically use the ping command with the remote host name (for example ping server1), which displays the resolved IP address of the remote computer.