Oops
Ping any device or server. As a simplified implementation of scripting engines, users can arrange for a certain command or program to be executed in the event of connection loss, resume and so on. Used in combination with the other powerful tool sets, the EMCO Ping Monitor is often ahead of the pack for the sheer functionality it provides.
When a router ricochet's back an ICMP packet to report an error, it recreates all of the fields in the original IP header of the packet that it is reporting on. So, an error collection program on the original sending computer could analyze the header and work out exactly which of the IP packets that it sent out failed.
A DNS resolution function shows the hostname for a requested IP address if it can find it. The absence of a hostname for a record should raise alarms if that IP address was contactable because either your DNS records are out of date or you have an intruder on the network.
A ping involves a packet of data being sent to a specific IP address (known as an echo request), if the device is active and healthy it will respond (known as an echo reply) and likely provide additional information that might help diagnose any network issues.
While this tends to be a less important issue in agent-based systems, since you're going to have to install software on each monitoring target ping monitor tool with email notification anyway; for agentless systems, it needs to be as painless as possible because it's a big part of the overall installation process.
Knowing that critical systems and services are working is a fundamental aspect of the network administrator's job, and Ping Monitoring is the most powerful tool for doing so. The sheer simplicity of the command is rather profound, especially considering the amount of information can be garnered from it.
The response to an echo request is immediate and so if the program that sends the request takes a timestamp the moment that the echo request is sent, and another the moment the response arrives, the system can calculate how long a packet takes to get to the target and back.
