Weird C# Ping Exception

Question

I'm experiencing a very annoying problem in my C# application. For some reason, this code is causing a System.Net.Sockets.SocketException with result: "No such host is known." and 'connected' is always false.

bool connected;

try {
    Ping pinger = new Ping();
    PingReply reply = pinger.Send("http://www.google.com", 15000);
    connected = reply != null && reply.Status == IPStatus.Success;
} catch {
}

The strange thing is that both pinging using the command prompt and http requests all result in success. Does anyone have any idea why this code is failing?

Answer 1

It's failing because it's taking the http:// as part of the host name, rather than the protocol.

Ping does not use the HTTP protocol, it uses ICMP . Changing the code to the following will fix your issue

Ping pinger = new Ping();
PingReply reply = pinger.Send("www.google.com", 15000);