Ping utility on Oracle Linux can report network is down

The article on My Oracle Support "Oracle Linux: Ping to IP address on non-local subnet returns "ping: sendmsg: Network Is Down"" in note ID 1625215.1 shows us why the ping command will timeout without some changes in the configuration file.  This is worth some reading because you'll learn more about the config files that make up your system, but also a bit about subnetting and routing.