Is there an easy way to tell if a computer on my network is alive? The complication is that our switch doesn't forward ICMP packets (thus making ping impossible to use) and I can't guarantee that any of these computers will have services running on any known ports... the only thing they have in common is that they all run Microsoft file shares... is there any way to negotiate a connection to these shares in PHP, to determine if the computer is on the network? I can use NetBIOS name or IP addresses for the connections...
