It may not be that the ping is a problem, it is more likely my ISP. You see a GNU-License, Perl script that my firewall uses ("syswatch" by Point Clark Networks) checks if a WAN iface is "up", then attempts to use an icmp ping via the explicit iface to check if it still has internet connectivity.

This works fine thru FIOS, but Comcast seems to block or otherwise mangle the icmp pings (no matter what target host I try). I tried switching the ping object to use UDP, but that doesn't work at all, and the Net::Ping docs seem to indicate that those are the only protocols that can be explicitly directed to a specific iface -- which I need to do, in order to check that specific connection.

Does anyone have any other options I can try to validate a WAN link's internet connectivity? I thought of using a WWW-Head request over http, but that can't be directed through a specific interface -- maybe if we dynamically adjusted the OS's routes to push the request thru an interface, but that seems klunky at best.

Anyone have any ideas how I can get Perl to detect my WAN status more accurately when I have multiple WAN interfaces? Thanks! -AJ

In reply to Net::Ping not working right by aweber1nj

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