Question

I have C# based client-server architecture. The client will connect to server and exchange data.

I need to check the server status continuously and if the server goes down (removed from the network or shut down) the client needs to indicate that.

If I am using Ping utility in the client program, which will be the best method in terms of performance i.e, monitor via a separate thread or through a background class?

public static bool GetPingResponse(string IpAddress, int timeout = 3000)
{
    var ping = new Ping();
    var reply = ping.Send(IpAddress, timeout); 
    if (reply.Status == IPStatus.Success)
    {
        return true;
    }
    else
    {
        return false;
    }
}

Is there any other option better than Ping in terms of performance and consuming the resource?

Answer 1

You’ll want to make sure your call is representative of “being available”. For example, if it’s an http server, making a ping request just says it’s reachable via the network. The web server could be down but the network stack is up. If that’s the case, make a call to something that exercises more of the stack like http. If there’s backend databases, the call could go through to the database server. It all depends on your definition of “available”. If the point is to say the application is available, you should look into a call that exercises a path through the full stack.

It also depends on what the server has available and what’s open via firewalls between the clients and the servers.

Ping uses ICMP which some sites choose to block via firewalls. If that’s open, it’s a cheap call with little overhead.

If that’s blocked and it’s a web server for example over http, you could have a cheap endpoint on the web server that you could call via http client in C#.

You’ll want to poll on a background thread probably with a timer. Look into the BackgroundWorker class or ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkitem.

Finally, you could look into a monitoring solution – there’s many out there which could monitor multiple facets of your server(s). If you go that route, the client could simply query the monitoring solution which might be better since you wouldn’t have n clients polling your servers – just one monitoring stack.

On a side note, the last block of code can be simplified down to:

return reply.Status == IPStatus.Success;