“Ping Hostname” Returning an IPv6 Address Instead of IPv4? (Windows)

On Windows based PCs and Servers, and where IPv6 is enabled on one of the network adapters, you may find that when you do a:

ping name-of-host

… you get an IPv6 address returned in the results.  But what if you want to test IPv4 connectivity?  You can add a -4 switch to the ping command to force it to use IPv4 as follows:

ping -4 name-of-host

Ping will now ping the IPv4 address as opposed to the IPv6.

It’s worth noting, that if you do want to test for IPv6 connectivity, you can add a -6 switch to force that:

ping -6 name-of-host