Pinging a Reader with C#

 Here's a handy way to determine if a reader is connected to the network or not. It uses the .NET Ping and PingOptions classes, so make sure to add the following namespace to your project.

 

using System.Net.NetworkInformation;

//Then, you can write a method like this, that returns true if the reader is connected and false if it is not.

private bool ReaderIsAvailable(string address)
{
    Ping pingSender = new Ping();
    PingOptions options = new PingOptions();
    options.DontFragment = true;
    string data = "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa";
    byte[] buffer = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(data);
    int timeout = 120;
    PingReply reply = pingSender.Send(address, timeout, buffer, options);
    if (reply.Status == IPStatus.Success)
        return true;
    else
        return false;
}

Finally, this is how you would call the method.

if (ReaderIsAvailable("SpeedwayR-10-25-32"))
{
    // Reader is connected to the network.
    // Start reading some tags!
}
else
{
    // Reader is not connected to the network.
    // Handle it here.
}