FWIW, I wrote a Perl module called Net::Ping::External that used the system 'ping' command to do ICMP ping on a variety of OSes. 'ping' commands are remarkably different from platform to platform, in terms of the arguments expected and the return values (IIRC win32 doesn't return differently on success or failure so you actually need to parse the output), so the purpose of N::P::E was to make a standard cross-platform way of getting a useful result from the system ICMP ping utilities. The module supports Win32, Linux, BSD, Solaris (2.6 and 2.7 at least), IRIX, and supposedly a bunch of other obscure systems (based on output that I was given by a few of the Perl developers that had odd platforms available.) I've not look at or touched that code in years, but you might want to look into it if you feel like writing a cross-platformish pinger for Python. (Google for Net::Ping::External and take any of the first 50 or so hits :)) - Colin