Ping
Is the host answering ICMP? Simple, and blocked more often than people expect.
Sends ICMP echo requests and waits for a reply.
Use it when
You are watching a host you control — a router, a VM, something on a network where you know ICMP is allowed.
Don't use it when the target is behind a cloud load balancer, a CDN, or any firewall you did not configure. Use Port instead, which proves something more useful anyway.
What to enter
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Host | A hostname or IP address. A URL works; we take the hostname. |
| Timeout | Default 10 seconds. |
Exactly when it's DOWN
- No reply to any of 3 probes within the timeout.
- The hostname does not resolve.
What it doesn't do
- Enormous numbers of hosts drop ICMP. AWS ELB, most managed load balancers and plenty of corporate firewalls never reply. A ping monitor on those is permanently down while the service is perfectly healthy.
- A host that replies to ping is not a host that is serving anything. The machine is on; the application may have died an hour ago.
- Prefers IPv4.
Example
Host 192.0.2.10 for a VM on your own network.
For anything public, prefer example.com:443 as a Port monitor — it survives ICMP filtering and proves the service is listening.
Alerts
Down, recovered, and latency (round-trip time) if you set a threshold.
Last updated 4 October 2026
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