Ping Monitoring with PRTG

Ping is a command-line utility which is available on almost any operating system with network connectivity. It acts as a test to see if a networked device is reachable. The ping command sends a request over the network to a specific target device. A successful ping results in a response from the device that was pinged to the source system. Usually, ping is used to check the availability of a device and measure the round-trip time of the request and response.

A ping test shows you if a source system is able to connect to a target device, that is, if this device is available. It is an extremely simple diagnostic tool for getting a general idea of a device's availability. It does not, however, tell you how well individual devices are running. For this, you need a more detailed analysis, for example via SNMP, WMI, or SSH.

Ping monitoring is the process of pinging devices in a network with a monitoring software like PRTG to find out if they are available. With the data that a pinged device sends back, the monitoring tool can measure and analyze minimum, maximum, and average response time and deviations from the sent ping.

In a local network, a ping value of one millisecond is considered normal. On the Internet, it depends on the application. A video conference requires a lower ping value than a request to a website. A ping value of less than 100 milliseconds is preferable, but a value of around 500 milliseconds is often still acceptable for a reasonable user experience.

Every system administrator can immediately tell if a ping value is too high. High ping values usually lead to more work for the technical support team because they can indicate, for example, that network connections or telephone services are down. Therefore, it is always good to know about your ping times with a ping monitoring software like PRTG.

When you install PRTG, the tool automatically pings all network devices within a specified IP range and incorporates them into your monitoring environment. Such devices can be, for example, routers, switches, servers, or stationary computers. This way, you don't have to do anything to set up your initial monitoring.

PRTG uses Ping sensors to monitor the availability of your network devices. It pings the devices in your network and waits for a response. This way, it can measure, for example, the response time of a device, that is, the time it takes the device to send back a response to the PRTG core server system.

Yes, our software can also be used to ping devices in distributed networks. PRTG uses remote probes to connect other locations to your central monitoring environment. If something goes wrong, you are alerted in real time so that you can take action at once.

Our ping monitoring tool monitors your network devices around the clock. You can individually set the threshold values that trigger an alert when they exceed or fall below a specific value. If a device fails, PRTG notifies you at once.

In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, for example the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space on a disk drive. On average, you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.