title: How does the ping "-n" flag work? AND does it affect response time? (Linux)
body: <p>My question has 2 sides to it, first I want to know <strong>how does the "-n" flag work for the ping command in Linux, in particular what step does the ping program  avoid doing when I place a "-n" flag and how does this optimize the query(or speeds up the response, if so)?</strong> and I also want to know <strong>what is a symbolic name for a host?</strong> which i need to know to understand the -n flag.</p>
  
  <h1>My research:</h1>
  
  <p>The ping manual from the Linux terminal(man ping) says: "-n: Numeric output only. No attempt will be made to lookup symbolic names for host addresses". <br>
  From that quote I already have a doubt: <strong>I don't know what a symbolic name for a host is</strong>, and googling didn't help... <br></p>
  
  <p>Then I tested the ping command with the flag -n and without it, the hostname used was www.gmail.com, and the results only differ in the "FROM" section of the output: <br>
  <strong>Without -n I got:</strong> 64 bytes from mia07s27-in-f165.1e100.net (216.58.219.165) <br>
  <strong>Using -n i got:</strong> 64 bytes from 216.58.219.165 <br>
  So I am guessing that the symbolic name of this particular host is: "mia07s27-in-f165.1e100.net", but <strong>what does it mean?</strong> and <strong>how is the process of getting this symbolic name done?</strong></p>
  
  <h1>My thoughts:</h1>
  
  <p>I have a theory about how this might work:<br>
  By default, when i don't include the "-n" flag, the ping program sends the host Echo Request packets which will have a bit indicating that i didn't use the "-n" flag, so the host responds with Echo Response packets that include information about his symbolic name. When I do use the "-n" flag the bit will turn to 1(or 0, who knows..) and this will indicate the host that he doesn't have to include the extra information about his symbolic name, which in turn will make the ping response time lower, but this time is insignificant and won't be noticeable.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Can you guys validate this theory I made up? is it correct?</strong></p>