Check Availability of a Server

This checks the availability of a server by sending a ping to the given IP address and waiting a certain amount of time for a response from the server:

public static bool ServerAvailable(string ip, int timeout)
{
  Ping pingSender = new Ping();
  PingReply reply;
  try
  {
    reply = pingSender.Send(ip, timeout);
  }
  catch
  {
    return false;
  }
  return (reply.Status == IPStatus.Success);
}