The pingr package is a simple utility that can be used to check if a remote machine is running, by sending network packets to it. It is similar to the command line ping program, in fact for ICMP packages it just calls ping.
The ping() function does ICMP ping, via the system's ping utility:
library(pingr)
ping("127.0.0.1")#> [1] 0.055 0.061 0.123By default it sends three packets and measures the time it receives and answer. It waits between sending out the packets, so if you want a really quick check, you can just send a single packet:
ping("127.0.0.1", count = 1)#> [1] 0.046If a machine is down (or it does not exist), then NA is returned instead of the roundtrip time:
ping("192.0.2.1", count = 1)#> [1] NAWith TCP ping we can check if a machine is listeing on a TCP port, e.g. if google's search web server is up and running:
ping_port("www.google.com", port = 80, count = 1)#> [1] 78.884