reading and using ping results

[Anon]

Hi! i'm developing the function ping on php with a system call using this code:

system ("ping $host");

where host is the host i'm pinging.

what i do obtain is certainly the results of that pinging on my browser. Now what i need is to read and tu use in variables those results. For example i need to read the TIME and the TTL for every package or read the AVERAGE, MINIMUN, MAXIMUN TIME for administration purposes of my site.

My question is, how can i access that information and how can i put into variables

thanks a lot

karla