Imagine you are trying to ping a device from your Cisco Switch or a Cisco Router, but by mistake you type a wrong IP address, instead of waiting for the device to give a request time out you can about the ping sequence in your Cisco Device by pressing <CTRL-SHIFT-6> twice in succession. The Cisco Switch or a Cisco Router mentions there is an escape sequence, but doesn’t tell you what it is!

From above picture notice that the ping sequence stopped at 3^rd packet.  -5 packets is the default. This combination works for trace route as well pings, both extended and regular.