For depending on your needs, (how many hosts, what all you need monitored) Nagios (http://www.nagios.org/) Mon (http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/admin/mon/html/) or Zabbix (http://www.*zabbix*.com/) may do the trick. They are resonably different from each other, while having a converging set of features. Each handles considerably more than ping, so they may be overkill for you. Jacob Leaver Senior Systems Administrator ReachONE Internet