title: How to check if Web server is up? (C#)
body: <p>I am building a monitoring application to continuously monitor all aspects of my system. I was hoping to use the <code>Ping()</code> function to determine if the server is up but the <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.networkinformation.ping.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">MSDN documentation</a> itself says that it is not the best way:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>A successful Ping indicates only that
    the remote host can be reached on the
    network; the presence of higher level
    services (such as a Web server) on the
    remote host is not guaranteed.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Are there any other ways to do this better?</p>