How to Set Up Ping Uptime Monitoring

What is a Ping Check?

A Ping check sends an ICMP echo request from Xitoring's global probing nodes to your target host and waits for an echo reply. It's the simplest way to verify that a host is reachable on the network — no application-layer protocol involved, just raw connectivity.

Ping checks are ideal for:

Routers, switches, and firewalls
Bare-metal servers without a public web service
VPN gateways and edge devices
Any device that responds to ICMP and exposes an IP

What Gets Monitored

Reachability — host responds to ICMP echo requests
Round-trip time (RTT) — latency from each probing node
Packet loss — percentage of dropped packets across attempts
Geographic performance — RTT differences across regions

Prerequisites

A reachable IP address or hostname
ICMP not blocked by firewalls or upstream networks between Xitoring nodes and your target
Cloud provider security groups configured to allow ICMP from Xitoring's probing IPs

How to Set Up a Ping Check

Step 1: Create the Check

Log in to your Xitoring Dashboard
Navigate to Uptime → Add Check
Select Ping as the check type

Step 2: Configure the Target

Enter the hostname or IP address (e.g., 192.0.2.10 or gateway.example.com)
Set the check interval (30 seconds to 15 minutes)
Set the timeout (default: 30 seconds)

Step 3: Choose Probing Nodes

Select at least 3 probing nodes spread across regions. Multi-node checks prevent false positives caused by a single node's network blip.

Step 4: Assign a Notification Role

Under Triggers, select the notification role you want alerts sent to (Email, Slack, SMS, etc.).

Step 5: Save and Verify

Save the check. Xitoring runs the first probe immediately and reports status within seconds.

Setting Up Triggers

Common alerting rules for Ping checks:

Down — host fails to respond from N nodes consecutively
High RTT — average round-trip time exceeds your threshold (e.g., 200 ms)
Packet loss — loss rate above your threshold (e.g., 10%)

Tips

Always require multi-node confirmation before alerting — single-node failures often reflect a probe-side network issue, not a real outage
ICMP can be deprioritized by some networks under load. If you need stronger guarantees, pair Ping with a TCP or HTTP check on the same host
Cloud firewalls block ICMP by default — explicitly allow it from Xitoring's probing IP ranges if you're monitoring AWS/GCP/Azure instances
Don't rely on Ping alone for web services — a host can respond to ICMP while its web server is down