Click here to Skip to main content
15,867,939 members
Articles / Programming Languages / Visual Basic
Article

C# Ping Component

Rate me:
Please Sign up or sign in to vote.
4.32/5 (28 votes)
30 Mar 20052 min read 379.6K   12.3K   83   53
An easy to use C# ping component.

Sample Image - CSharpPing.jpg

Introduction

While working on a project that needs to check the quality of the network connection, I've found that there is no easy way to ping another computer. I expected there would be something in the framework (somewhere in the System.NET namespace) to do this as it seems like a common thing to want to do, but I could find nothing so my search turned to the web. While I was able to find some c# ping examples, none of them were very well designed. I wanted a ping utility that would let me ping a remote machine any number of times and return the ping statistics in a sensible manner (that is, not something I'd have to parse) so I decided that I'd make my own.

Most of the ping code I saw on the net seemed to be derived from this MSDN article written by Lance Olson which was written way back when for the Beta 1 release of .Net (whether it cited him or not...). I based my ping utility on this code along with this article, written by Peter A. Bromberg, PhD, which updated the Olson's code to work with .NET version 1. Using this code as a starting point I've tried to make it a little more OO by creating a couple more classes and moving the code around, so that they do their own work. I think the code makes a lot more sense now and is much easier to understand and use. I used the Windows command line ping command as a baseline for the information I wanted to return, so I created a PingResponse object that encapsulates all and gets returned instead of an int or string. I'm not going to write up a detailed description of exactly how the code works as it is either self-explanatory or simply works because that's how you have to do it (most of the ICMP class). I've included a very simple client form to show how to use the ping utility asynchronously, which I imagine, how you'd want to use it most of the time.

Using the code

To use this component simply create a Ping object and call the PingHost or BeginPingHost function.

Synchronous Example:

C#
private void Ping(string hostname)
{
    //Create ping object
    Ping netMon = new Ping();

    //Ping host (this will block until complete)
    PingResponse response = netMon.PingHost(hostname, 4);

    //Process ping response
    if (response != null)
    {
        ProcessResponse(response);
    }
}

Asynchronous Example:

C#
//Create ping object
Ping netMon = new netMon();

private void Load()
{
    //Wire events (in constructor or InitializeComponent)
    netMon.PingError += new PingErrorEventHandler(netMon_PingError);
    netMon.PingStarted += new PingStartedEventHandler(netMon_PingStarted);
    netMon.PingResponse += new PingResponseEventHandler(netMon_PingResponse);
    netMon.PingCompleted += new PingCompletedEventHandler(netMon_PingCompleted);
}

private void Ping(string hostname)
{
    //Start ping
    IAsyncResult result = netMon.BeginPingHost(
                     new AsyncCallback(EndPing), hostname, 4);
}

private void EndPing(IAsyncResult result)
{
    netMon.EndPingHost(result);
}

private void netMon_PingStarted(object sender, PingStartedEventArgs e)
{
    //Process ping started
}

private void netMon_PingResponse(object sender, PingResponseEventArgs e)
{
    //Process ping response
}

private void netMon_PingCompleted(object sender, PingCompletedEventArgs e)
{
    //Process ping completed
}

private void netMon_PingError(object sender, PingErrorEventArgs e)
{
    //Process ping error
}

Known Issues / Further Enhancements

  • The first ping is sometimes longer than it should be. I suspect this is because of some extra time taken to create the initial socket connection and could be eliminated by simply dropping that first ping time.
  • Currently, you can only cancel when the PingResponse event is fired. It would be nice to be able to cancel at any time and have it processed immediately.
  • I should really keep track of the ping response type per response instead of for the whole set of responses. I simply haven't got around to change the PingReponse yet.

History

  • Version 1.0: Initial release.

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here


Written By
Web Developer
United States United States
This member has not yet provided a Biography. Assume it's interesting and varied, and probably something to do with programming.

Comments and Discussions

 
Questionabout app dead Problem Pin
kernzhang823-Dec-12 20:57
kernzhang823-Dec-12 20:57 
QuestionPing Error Pin
manjeet ghalyan6-Jan-11 22:59
manjeet ghalyan6-Jan-11 22:59 
AnswerRe: Ping Error Pin
Wesley Brown11-Feb-11 8:36
Wesley Brown11-Feb-11 8:36 
AnswerMessage Closed Pin
10-Feb-20 22:44
Member 1474127110-Feb-20 22:44 
GeneralThanks for great code but you have some bugs. Pin
mrali8626-Sep-09 2:55
mrali8626-Sep-09 2:55 
GeneralRe: Thanks for great code but you have some bugs. Pin
Wesley Brown1-Apr-10 10:36
Wesley Brown1-Apr-10 10:36 
GeneralRe: Thanks for great code but you have some bugs. Pin
Sabrina Hope27-May-10 2:52
Sabrina Hope27-May-10 2:52 
GeneralSource code not running Pin
saurabh931-Aug-09 20:28
saurabh931-Aug-09 20:28 
GeneralRe: Source code not running Pin
Christian Graus8-Sep-09 20:13
protectorChristian Graus8-Sep-09 20:13 
AnswerRe: Source code not running Pin
teixeirafms10-Dec-09 0:32
teixeirafms10-Dec-09 0:32 
GeneralSuggestion Pin
Jaguire24-Apr-08 8:54
Jaguire24-Apr-08 8:54 
GeneralRe: Suggestion Pin
CBlackburn3-Aug-08 0:07
CBlackburn3-Aug-08 0:07 
Pretty sure that is only in .NET 2.0 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.networkinformation.ping(VS.80).aspx[^])

Whereas this component is for .NET 1.1 (for those of us who cannot for whatever reason use the new platform). Works well too...
GeneralRe: Suggestion Pin
Arash Javadi13-May-09 21:08
Arash Javadi13-May-09 21:08 
GeneralAnswer: Timeouts Pin
imbored26-Mar-08 10:48
imbored26-Mar-08 10:48 
GeneralRe: Answer: Timeouts Pin
CBlackburn3-Aug-08 0:07
CBlackburn3-Aug-08 0:07 
QuestionMultithread error. False success messages Pin
Gokcer Gokdal26-Feb-08 9:07
Gokcer Gokdal26-Feb-08 9:07 
AnswerRe: Multithread error. False success messages Pin
yrleu24-Nov-08 23:14
yrleu24-Nov-08 23:14 
Generala lot of time... Pin
Tal Hakemon7-Mar-07 2:43
Tal Hakemon7-Mar-07 2:43 
GeneralProblem running ur code in web application Pin
jk859-Jun-06 21:01
jk859-Jun-06 21:01 
GeneralRe: Problem running ur code in web application Pin
icebob7-Jan-07 22:50
icebob7-Jan-07 22:50 
QuestionSocket Exception Pin
hezhicheng11-Apr-06 5:38
hezhicheng11-Apr-06 5:38 
AnswerRe: Socket Exception Pin
hezhicheng11-Apr-06 5:41
hezhicheng11-Apr-06 5:41 
GeneralRe: Socket Exception Pin
Wesley Brown11-Apr-06 7:00
Wesley Brown11-Apr-06 7:00 
NewsRe: Socket Exception Pin
hezhicheng12-Apr-06 2:58
hezhicheng12-Apr-06 2:58 
GeneralSynchronous timeout parameter not what it seems Pin
Roland_W6-Feb-06 2:41
Roland_W6-Feb-06 2:41 

General General    News News    Suggestion Suggestion    Question Question    Bug Bug    Answer Answer    Joke Joke    Praise Praise    Rant Rant    Admin Admin   

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.