Ping (ICMP) monitors
Send a machine an ICMP echo request on a schedule, time the reply, and hear as soon as it stops answering.
What it checks
A ping monitor sends an ICMP echo request - a ping - to a machine from one of Mon's locations and waits for the reply. If the reply comes back within the timeout, the machine is up, and the time the round trip took is recorded. It's the simplest way to know a server, router or any other device on the internet is still there.
A ping says only that the machine is reachable. A machine can answer pings while the service on it has stopped - to watch the service itself, use a port monitor or an HTTP monitor.
Adding one
Under Monitors, choose Add Monitor, then PING, and enter:
- Host - the machine to reach, by name or by IP address. A URL is cut down to its host.
To add several at once, choose Add several at once and paste the hosts into Hosts, one per line or separated by commas. Each becomes its own monitor, named after its host, and repeats are dropped.
The rest of the form is shared with every monitor: Monitoring - interval, timeout, maintenance windows and locations, see How checks work - then Alerts, see Alerts and contacts, and the monitor's Name, suggested from the host.
Ping monitors are on every plan, checked as often as every minute on paid plans and every 5 minutes on the Free plan.
What it reports
| What happened | Monitor |
|---|---|
| The machine replied within the timeout | Up |
| Nothing came back within the timeout | Down |
| The network reported the machine unreachable | Down |
| The host name couldn't be looked up | Down |
Each check records its round-trip time, shown on the monitor's Response Time chart. Each failed check records its reason in the Message column under Checks.
A failed ping is something another location might not see, so Mon tries the next of the monitor's locations before calling it down - see How checks work. The monitor is down only when every location tried got no reply.
When a machine doesn't answer pings
Many firewalls drop ICMP on purpose, and a machine behind one looks down to a ping monitor even while it's working. Either allow ICMP echo requests from Mon's addresses - listed on Locations and IP addresses and in your account under Locations - or watch the machine another way: a port monitor on a port it serves.
Ping, port and trace route
- A ping monitor tells you the machine is reachable.
- A port monitor tells you a service on it is accepting connections.
- A trace route monitor shows the path to it, hop by hop, so when a machine is slow or unreachable you can see where the trouble is.
Last updated Oct 25, 2026