Well, I've Googled how to do this a bit and found no efficient way to do it. What I would like is something that pings a computer on the local network using a predefined address/name etc., and if it can be reached, return "foobar". It'll be running on a Windows-based fileserver, on a page that shows shared folders and computers on the network.

Thanks

EDIT: I figured out what was wrong with the ping command I already had:

PHP code:

---

function pingcomputer($name){
    exec('ping -n 1 '.$name.' 2>&1',$output,$result); // was -c 1 instead of -n 1 which is what windows uses
    if($result==0){
        return '<img src="online.png" title="Online" alt=""/>';
    }else{
        return '<img src="offline.png" title="Offline" alt=""/>';
    }
}

---

use file_get_contents to get a file listing from it.. run apache on the remote machine.
If you get the page, its working fine. If you can't then you're not online

I do something similar (but with a lot more complicated rule set+code) to handle my ISP's internet rules.

you can do it in python cgi really easily, don't think that what your after though