I can't give you the answer, but I can rule out an attractive possibility for you.

I tried to wrap the call to $p->ping($host) with some benchmarking by Time::HiRes.

For example, 

use Net::Ping;
use Time::HiRes qw( usleep ualarm gettimeofday tv_interval );

my $p = new Net::Ping;
my $t0 = [gettimeofday];
$p->ping('www.yahoo.com');
print "Elapsed time:  ", tv_interval ( $t0, [gettimeofday]), "\n";

[download]
Unfortunately, the times I got back were not consistent with the ping user call: 
[bogus@www bin]$ ping -c 1 www.yahoo.com
PING www.yahoo.akadns.net (216.32.74.50) from 216.90.131.2 : 56(84) by
+tes of data.
64 bytes from www1.dcx.yahoo.com (216.32.74.50): icmp_seq=0 ttl=242 ti
+me=290.891 msec

--- www.yahoo.akadns.net ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/mdev = 290.891/290.891/290.891/0.000 ms
[bogus@www bin]$ ./ping-test.pl 
Elapsed time: 5.04157
[bogus@www bin]$ ping -c 1 www.yahoo.com
PING www.yahoo.akadns.net (216.32.74.52) from 216.90.131.2 : 56(84) by
+tes of data.
64 bytes from www3.dcx.yahoo.com (216.32.74.52): icmp_seq=0 ttl=242 ti
+me=94.607 msec

--- www.yahoo.akadns.net ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/mdev = 94.607/94.607/94.607/0.000 ms
[olsonco@www bin]$ ./ping-test.pl 
Elapsed time: 5.037361
[bogus@www bin]$ ping -c 1 www.yahoo.com
PING www.yahoo.akadns.net (64.58.76.178) from 216.90.131.2 : 56(84) by
+tes of data.
64 bytes from www9.dcx.yahoo.com (64.58.76.178): icmp_seq=0 ttl=242 ti
+me=101.953 msec

--- www.yahoo.akadns.net ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/mdev = 101.953/101.953/101.953/0.000 ms
[bogus@www bin]$

[download]
It doesn't appear in the perldocs of Net::Ping that it is sending multiple packets, so I'm somewhat mystified where the time difference comes in.

2001-04-19 Edit by Corion : Added CODE tags

In reply to Re: Net::Ping -- other output formats? by Starky
in thread Net::Ping -- other output formats? by Anonymous Monk

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