SmartPing

The “Ping” class component provided by Microsoft, which allows applications to determine if remote computers can be accessed over a network, carries some inherent flaws. For instance, it yields valid “PingReply.RoundtripTime” values only for the replies which are the result of a successful IP connection, with the “IPStatus.Success” status.

This issue is primarily encountered when relying on the “Ping” class for performing traceroutes since most of the replies could be offered with the “IPStatus.TltExpired” status. This automatically results in a “PingReply” with a “RoundtripTime” with a value of 0.

SmartPing, which was built upon the original “Ping”, was designed with having an easier extraction of the “Ping” class. One of the workarounds for the issues of “Ping” class was to measure the response time manually, using the “Stopwatch” class. However, this results in significantly poorer and less-accurate response times, since it will also account for the time required by the “Thread” component for resuming after the initial ping reply.

SmartPing comes packed with updated namespaces, for improved compatibility, having all of its ping replies containing the “RoundtripTime” property measured by the native “Ping” implementation, regardless of the status being provided as successful or not.