Using the Ping monitor in Anturis Console, you can set up monitoring of general reachability and latency for any remote host connected to the internet (such as an Apache web server). You can send ping requests either from one of the components in your infrastructure, or use one of the available Public Agents that are maintained by Anturis in different geographical locations. The ping monitor supports both IPv4 and IPv6 hosts.

Ping is a utility that is used to test the reachability and latency of an Internet Protocol (IP) network host. Reachability determines whether the remote device (such as a web server) can be reached from the originating host. Latency determines the time it takes for a message to reach the target host plus the time it takes for a response to reach the originating host (also known as round-trip delay time).

A ping tool uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) to send an echo request (‘ping’) to the target host and measures the time it takes for an echo reply (‘pong’) to return. The echo reply contains the exact data received in the echo request message. All echo request messages contain a unique identifier that enables the originating host to match the reply with the request that caused it. If a host is unreachable or in case of some other error, instead of an echo reply, the originating host receives an ICMP error message that contains the reason for the error. An error message also includes the identifier of the original message to match the error with the request that caused it.

Regular ping monitoring is a reliable way to ensure stable availability of your critical web servers. This will enable you to detect connection failures as soon as possible and to minimize outage time. It will also provide data to track the latency trends for your web servers, which is important in improving the efficiency of network configuration.