Ping check Beta

Type ping: send an ICMP echo and wait for the answer. The simplest question there is, and the right one for a router, a firewall or a box with no open ports.

There is no separate endpoint for this: it is the ordinary create a monitor call with type set to "ping". The same settings apply when you update a monitor with PATCH /api/v1/monitors/{id}.

Every type shares the same interval, retries, alerting, maintenance, results and reports. Only the settings below differ. See Check types for how the nine types compare.

Up or down

• Up when the host answers the ping. The response time is the round trip the ping reports.
• No answer is down: No reply to the ping. A name that doesn't resolve gives DNS lookup failed, and an unroutable address gives Host unreachable.
• Plenty of hosts drop ICMP on purpose. If a host is meant to be quiet, check a port with TCP instead.

When ICMP isn't available

ICMP needs a raw socket, which a container doesn't always allow. On a checking server without it, the check reports ICMP isn't available from this checking server instead of calling the host down, and it isn't retried, so a missing capability never looks like an outage.

Setting options returns pingAvailable, so a form can say why the option is greyed out before anyone creates a monitor that can't run.

Settings that apply

Create one

Related

• Setting options: check pingAvailable first
• TCP port check: for hosts that drop ICMP