Is this for a basic network monitoring system? What kind of results do you want to see? Do you want to add any action items/notifications in case of a failure? How many devices are you monitoring?
Check out
SolarWinds or
WhatUp Gold to name a few.
If you are wanting to do this yourself, then check out VBScript or Windows PowerShell. You can use the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) ping command to perform a scripted single ping. I do this in our logon scripts before attempting to make drive connections to shares.
Here is a VBScript version (paste the contents below to a text file and name it with a .VBS extension). Change the strServer = "ServerName" to your actual device name or IP address. Launch it a command prompt by typing the full name of the file.
strServer = "ServerName"
strWMIService = "ON"
Err.Clear
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\cimv2")
If Err.Number <> "0" then
Err.Clear
strWMIService = "OFF"
End if
if strWMIService = "ON" then
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_PingStatus Where Address = '" & strServer & "'")
For Each objItem in colItems
If objItem.StatusCode = 0 Then
MachineStatus = True
Else
MachineStatus = False
End if
Next
if MachineStatus = True then
Wscript.Echo strServer & " is responding"
else
Wscript.Echo strServer & " is NOT responding"
end if
else
Wscript.Echo "There was an error in the WMI Service on this computer."
end if