Why can't I ping herokuapp

Question

I have an application running on heroku, say my-app.herokuapp.com. However, if I type

ping -c 10 my-app.herokuapp.com

in Mac terminal, it says Request timeout, though the app is running, I can open it in my browser.

Why is that?

Answer 1

Ping uses a different protocol vs opening it in a browser. Ping uses ICMP whereas your browser will be using TCP. It would seem Heroku simply block the ICMP protocol which is fairly common as it can be abused (try pinging www.microsoft.com also)