50% bonus credits + 2x signup credits View Offer
Navigation

How do Ping monitors work?

Use ICMP Ping checks to monitor basic host reachability and network latency.

Ping monitors send ICMP echo requests to a host and verify it responds. They’re the simplest and most lightweight check type - ideal for verifying that a server or network device is reachable on the network.

How Ping Checks Work

UpCanary sends an ICMP echo request (a “ping”) to the target host from each selected region. If the host responds within the timeout window, the check passes. If there’s no response, the monitor marks as Down.

Ping checks measure:

  • Reachability - is the host responding to ICMP?
  • Round-trip latency - how long does it take to get a response?

Because ping runs at the network layer, it doesn’t verify whether any application or service on the host is functioning correctly.

Configuration Options

Host

The hostname or IP address to ping.

yourserver.com
192.168.1.1
10.0.0.50

Both public and private addresses are supported. For private/internal addresses, the host must be reachable from UpCanary’s monitoring infrastructure in at least one of your selected regions.

Timeout

Maximum time in milliseconds to wait for an ICMP response before marking the check as failed.

Default: 5000 ms (5 seconds). For hosts on fast networks, 2000–3000 ms is a reasonable tighter threshold. For hosts that are geographically distant or behind congested links, a higher timeout avoids false positives.

Common Use Cases

Server and VPS Uptime

The most common use of Ping monitors is verifying that a server is powered on and connected to the network:

Host: yourserver.com
Timeout: 5000ms
Interval: 1 minute

This is useful even for servers that run web services - if the server is completely unreachable, a ping check will detect it immediately regardless of which service crashed.

Network Equipment

Routers, switches, firewalls, and load balancers often don’t expose HTTP endpoints but respond to ICMP. Ping monitors are the natural fit:

Host: 10.0.0.1       (gateway router)
Timeout: 3000ms
Interval: 5 minutes

Homelab and Self-Hosted Devices

Ping is the easiest way to monitor NAS devices, Raspberry Pis, home servers, and other devices on a local or VPN-accessible network:

Host: nas.home.yourdomain.com
Timeout: 5000ms
Interval: 5 minutes

Basic Infrastructure Health

Before spending credits on detailed checks, a ping monitor gives you a quick signal that the underlying host is alive - useful as a baseline complement to more specific HTTP or TCP monitors.

Limitations and Recommendations

Ping only checks network reachability. A host can respond to ICMP while all its applications are crashed, its disk is full, or its database is refusing connections. A green ping check does not mean your service is working.

Some hosts block ICMP. Firewalls, cloud providers, and security-conscious operators sometimes disable ICMP responses. If your host doesn’t respond to pings even when it’s up, use a TCP or HTTP monitor instead.

Recommendation: For web services, APIs, and any application that matters to users, use an HTTP monitor as the primary check. Add a Ping monitor as a secondary check if you want to distinguish between “application down” and “server unreachable.”