I have a list of IP addresses I am testing with socket.gethostbyaddr(). For the most part, I am able to get a hostname returned to me when I run gethostbyaddr(). I am also hoping this will allow me to tell if a computer is up or down. However, in my environment, I am finding that I am able to get a hostname even though I am unable to actually ping that server (when I ping a server i like this, I get 'request timed out' messages telling me that the server is not up).
Other times, I am able to ping a server with success but the gethostbyaddr() request will not be able to return a hostname for me making me think that machine is truly down when I know it's not. Can anyone give me any pointers as to why this happens? Is there anyway I can do a reliable ping to another server with Python? I am not interested in doing system calls with a system Ping client (I have to ping way too many machines and this either takes too long or causes severe memory leakage due to MS's horrible ping client). Also, I am unable to use Jeremy Hylton's Python ping client because it does little more than call gethostbyaddr(). Thanks for taking a look at this. Harlin Seritt -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
