Ping a site in Python?

Question

How do I ping a website or IP address with Python?

Answer 1

It's hard to say what your question is, but there are some alternatives.

If you mean to literally execute a request using the ICMP ping protocol, you can get an ICMP library and execute the ping request directly. Google "Python ICMP" to find things like this icmplib. You might want to look at scapy, also.

This will be much faster than using os.system("ping " + ip ).

If you mean to generically "ping" a box to see if it's up, you can use the echo protocol on port 7.

For echo, you use the socket library to open the IP address and port 7. You write something on that port, send a carriage return ("\r\n") and then read the reply.

If you mean to "ping" a web site to see if the site is running, you have to use the http protocol on port 80.

For or properly checking a web server, you use urllib2 to open a specific URL. (/index.html is always popular) and read the response.

There are still more potential meaning of "ping" including "traceroute" and "finger".