The answer: you can't. Ping, or ICMP echo request, does not even let you choose a pott to send to. The closet thing to "port ping", is what the article suggeste

The answer: you can't. Ping, or ICMP echo request, does not even let you choose a pott to send to. The closet thing to "port ping", is what the article suggested, a TCP connectivity test (and measure the RTT/2 as the latency.)