IP Ping using VB.NET

[SKREECH]

Hi Friends,
I am new on this forum, so please ignore my mistakes. I am having many network attached storage on my network. And these network are attached to network over a spread location. I am having the spread sheet which contains all IP addresses. Now my question is that is it possible to open the spreadsheet or application i need to know whether the NAS is still live.? I don't know whether this would be easier in excel VBA or Visual Studios VB.NET.!? If possible provide me the help in VBA or Visual Studios VB.NET. If anyone has any knowledge of this would be great and maybe an example of 1 IP ping in either application so that i can replicate myself or something.

[Katty]

There may be several approaches for getting the desired result of your query. The command to run this is :

ping IP | echo %errorlevel%

After putting this command you will get the one output out of two. The output will be either 0 (live) or 1 (dead). You can do one of three things:

1. You can run a macro that changes the sheet and reopens the sheet, by opening the spreadsheet.
2. Also you can have an autorun function, after opening the spreadsheet that updates the sheet on open.
3. And the last thing to do is running a batch file to generate and load the updated spreadsheet.

According to me the last option is the better and the easiest.

[kelfro]

I would like to suggest you to download the application called AdvancedRM. By using the AdvancedRM you can do the Network Monitoring Utility for every SNMP enabled device in your network. This application is also useful to monitor any interface of any router, PC, switch, NAS etc that has SNMP activated. Also you will get this application free on the Web and its very small and lightweight program that does not waste your system resources. So you can try this application.

[DotNetUser]

It will be much better if you write the ping code yourself so you can control exactly how you do the ping. Also the advantage of writing the ping code is that there will be nothing stopping you from spawning off the PING.EXE program that comes with Windows itself to do the work. PING.EXE returns an error code of 1 if the host did not respond on the Windows XP operating system. And if the host responded, PING.EXE returns 0. You may not able to start programs from your application if there's security issues or you are running as a Win32 Service. So you'll have to handle that situation yourself. Hope that this will help you while writing the ping code.

[Praetor]

This code can help you to Ping your IP using the VB.Net. This code is written in VB.Net.

Public Function ComputerIsOnline(ByVal strComputerName As String) As Boolean
On Error GoTo ErrorHandler

Dim strRes  As String
Dim ShellX      As String
Dim FileNum     As Integer
Dim lPid        As Long
Dim lHnd        As Long
Dim lRet        As Long

'DoEvents
ShellX = Shell("command.com /c ping -n 2 " & strComputerName & " > log.txt", vbHide)
lPid = ShellX
If lPid <> 0 Then
lHnd = OpenProcess(SYNCHRONIZE, 0, lPid)
If lHnd <> 0 Then
lRet = WaitForSingleObject(lHnd, INFINITE)
CloseHandle (lHnd)
End If
FileNum = FreeFile
Open "log.txt" For Input As #FileNum
strResult = Input(LOF(1), 1)
Close #FileNum
ComputerIsOnline = (InStr(strResult, "Lost = 0") > 0)
End If
Exit Function
 ErrorHandler:
ComputerIsOnline = False
Exit Function
End Functio