alternative to ping

[robertaccettura]

My host doesn't allow the ping command for whatever reason.

I need to see if a host is up.

Anyone know some sort of a PHP alternative?

[diego25]

Use fsockopen to attempt to connect to the server's 80 port.

Something like

$sk = fsockopen("domain.com", 80);
if ($sk) {
  print "Up";
  fclose($sk);
} else {
  print "Down";
}

Diego