Ping a site in Python?

Question

How do I ping a website or IP address with Python?

Answer 1

If you want something actually in Python, that you can play with, have a look at Scapy:

from scapy.all import *
request = IP(dst="www.google.com")/ICMP()
answer = sr1(request)

That's in my opinion much better (and fully cross-platform), than some funky subprocess calls. Also you can have as much information about the answer (sequence ID.....) as you want, as you have the packet itself.