Thanks for the explanation Eliya. Basically,i am writing a script which forks multiple processes which ping different hosts for 40-50 sec and report to the parent script with values. I'd like to do the pinging part in parallel,not sequentially. So,if i have a 10 child ping processes,do i need to create 10 different pipes ( hope i am getting this right).Lastly,what sort of IPC is better in such cases.