Ping a server using PHP

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PEAR’s Net_Ping is a niffty wrapper class for executing ping calls from PHP. You can use it to check if a remote server is responding correctly. The library can be download from  here.

Installation

Net_Ping being a Pear package we will use the Pear installer to download and install it. I recommend to always use the Pear installer to download packages rather than downloading it manually as the Pear installer automatically downloads any dependent packages.

pear install Net_Ping-2.4.4

Usage

A example of using Net_Ping is given below.

<?php
 
    require_once "Net/Ping.php";
 
    $ping = Net_Ping::factory();
 
    if(PEAR::isError($ping))
      echo $ping->getMessage();
    else
    {
      /* Number of packets to send */
      $ping->setArgs(array('count' => 4));
      $rawData = $ping->ping('google.com');
      print_r($rawData);
    }
 
?>

The output of the same is shown below.

Net_Ping_Result Object
(
    [_icmp_sequence] => Array
        (
            [1] => 310
            [2] => 300
            [3] => 318
            [4] => 301
        )
 
    [_target_ip] => 64.233.167.99
    [_bytes_per_request] => 32
    [_bytes_total] => 128
    [_ttl] => 238
    [_raw_data] => Array
        (
            [0] => 
            [1] => Pinging google.com [64.233.167.99] with 32 bytes of data:
            [2] => 
            [3] => Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=310ms TTL=238
            [4] => Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=300ms TTL=238
            [5] => Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=318ms TTL=238
            [6] => Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=301ms TTL=238
            [7] => 
            [8] => Ping statistics for 64.233.167.99:
            [9] =>     Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
            [10] => Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
            [11] =>     Minimum = 300ms, Maximum = 318ms, Average = 307ms
        )
 
    [_sysname] => windows
    [_round_trip] => Array
        (
            [min] => 300
            [max] => 318
            [avg] => 307
        )
 
    [_transmitted] => 4
    [_received] => 4
    [_loss] => 0
)
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5 thoughts on “Ping a server using PHP”

  1. Hello,

    I have found your post about pinging in php with the pear net_ping class.

    Could you please tell me how I can use the output data? I have no clue how to use the data so I echo for example the IP adres on a page.

    By thanking you in advance,

  2. To get the IP element for example use the following:

    $ip = $rawData->_target_ip;

    and so on.

    Now if you want tot get the ‘_raw_data’ element, you will see that it is an array, so we will have to loop through the same, like this:

    foreach($rawData->_raw_data as $data)
    echo $data . “\n”;

  4. A easy way is to run the code from the command line and redirect the output to a text file, which you can print as shown below. Assuming your code filename is Ping.php.

    c:\php Ping.php > pingdata.txt

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