ICMP Monitor Reference

An ICMP monitor sends ICMP echo requests ("pings") to a host to verify that it is reachable and to measure round-trip latency. This is useful for monitoring hosts that expose no TCP or HTTP service, such as routers, gateways, and bare network endpoints.

Each check sends 3 echo requests spaced ~100ms apart. The check is considered up as long as at least one reply is received; it fails only when all three packets are lost. The reported latency is the average round-trip time of the replies received, and packet loss is recorded per check.

Use cases:

Router, gateway, and firewall reachability.
Baseline network latency and packet-loss tracking.
Monitoring IoT and network devices without an application-layer service.

Configuration

Host

Type: String (required) Format: Hostname or IP address, without a port

The host to ping. Both IPv4 and IPv6 targets are supported — the resolved address family selects the protocol automatically.

Examples:

openstatus.dev
1.1.1.1
2001:4860:4860::8888

Regions

Type: Array of strings (required) Format: Region identifiers (e.g., iad, jnb)

The geographical regions from which the ping is sent. See the Location Reference for the full list of regions and the IPs to allowlist.

Frequency

Type: String (required) Format: Duration string (e.g., 30s, 1m, 1h)

The interval at which the ICMP monitor pings the target host. Supported frequencies:

30 seconds
1 minute
5 minutes
10 minutes
30 minutes
1 hour

Response time thresholds

Timeout

Type: Duration (optional) Default: 45 seconds

The total budget for the whole check (all three echo requests). Each packet waits at most the remaining budget for a reply.

Degraded

Type: Duration (optional)

The average latency after which a check is considered to be in a degraded performance state, giving early warning of network slowdowns.

Retry

Type: Integer (optional) Default: 3

The number of times the monitor retries a fully failed check (all packets lost) before reporting a definitive error.

OpenTelemetry

Configures the export of monitoring metrics to an OpenTelemetry-compatible observability platform.

OTLP endpoint

Type: String (optional) Protocol: HTTP only

The OTLP endpoint URL where collected metrics — including latency and packet loss — are exported. Only HTTP endpoints are supported.

OTLP headers

Type: Key-value pairs (optional)

Custom headers to include when sending metrics to your OTLP endpoint, commonly used for authentication or tenant identification.

Common example:

Authorization: Bearer <your_token>

Create your first monitor — step-by-step tutorial on setting up a monitor.
CLI reference — manage monitors programmatically from the command line.