# Using 3rd python library: pyping

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-3rd-python-library-pyping/18949>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Tags:** ignition79, scripting\
**Created:** [July 24, 2018, 3:32pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-3rd-python-library-pyping/18949 "2018-07-24T15:32:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 9

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kevin.Collins](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/kevin.collins/32/13497_2.png) [@Kevin.Collins](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Kevin.Collins)\
**Post date:** [July 31, 2018, 2:06pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-3rd-python-library-pyping/18949/9 "2018-07-31T14:06:39Z")

</div>

Just augmenting @Kyle_Chase’s good suggestion. You could create a script in your `project` script library called `inetutils`:

```auto
import sys
import re
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

def ping(host, count=1, timeout=1000):
	if sys.platform == 'win32':
		count_arg = '-n'
		timeout_arg = '-w'
	else:
		count_arg = '-c'
		timeout_arg = '-W'
	
	args = map(str, ['ping', count_arg, count, timeout_arg, timeout, host])
	
	p = Popen(args, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)
	output, err = p.communicate()
	
	if p.returncode == 0: # success
		try:
			m = re.search("time=(\d+(?:\.\d+){0,1})\s*ms", output)
			time = float(m.group(1))
		except Exception, e:
			time = -1
	else:
		time = None
		
	return (time, p.returncode)

```

Then, in your project, you can use the something like the following:

```auto
from project.inetutils import ping

time, result = ping('google.com')
if result == 0:
	print 'Success, response time is: %.2fms' % time
else:
	print 'Failure, return code: %d' % result

```

The above solution will leverage the return code of the subprocess call, where 0 is a successful result. Other return codes will produce based on various failures of the call to _ping_ such as `68` for unknown host, or `2` for response timeout. Keep in mind that this is still going to be a _blocking_ call, so use accordingly.

Hope this helps!

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