diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index bb0eea6bb..7d13ce2ca 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -68,6 +68,7 @@ continue sending logs to /var/log/telegraf/telegraf.log.
 - [#1344](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/issues/1344): Fix config file parse error logging.
 - [#1771](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/issues/1771): Delete nil fields in the metric maker.
 - [#870](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/issues/870): Fix MySQL special characters in DSN parsing.
+- [#1742](https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/issues/1742): Ping input odd timeout behavior.
 
 ## v1.0.1 [2016-09-26]
 
diff --git a/plugins/inputs/ping/ping.go b/plugins/inputs/ping/ping.go
index b6baa7d99..089248efe 100644
--- a/plugins/inputs/ping/ping.go
+++ b/plugins/inputs/ping/ping.go
@@ -52,13 +52,13 @@ const sampleConfig = `
   ## urls to ping
   urls = ["www.google.com"] # required
   ## number of pings to send per collection (ping -c <COUNT>)
-  count = 1 # required
+  # count = 1
   ## interval, in s, at which to ping. 0 == default (ping -i <PING_INTERVAL>)
-  ping_interval = 0.0
+  # ping_interval = 1.0
   ## per-ping timeout, in s. 0 == no timeout (ping -W <TIMEOUT>)
-  timeout = 1.0
+  # timeout = 1.0
   ## interface to send ping from (ping -I <INTERFACE>)
-  interface = ""
+  # interface = ""
 `
 
 func (_ *Ping) SampleConfig() string {
@@ -200,6 +200,11 @@ func processPingOutput(out string) (int, int, float64, error) {
 
 func init() {
 	inputs.Add("ping", func() telegraf.Input {
-		return &Ping{pingHost: hostPinger}
+		return &Ping{
+			pingHost:     hostPinger,
+			PingInterval: 1.0,
+			Count:        1,
+			Timeout:      1.0,
+		}
 	})
 }