Utilities - netup

netup - connects to a host & port return status reflects success or failure

netup connects to a host & port number (defaults to ECHO_PORT) with the TCP protocol. The hostname can either be host.domain or a 4 octet IP address. If the port number is the ECHO_PORT, then it tests the connection. returns 0 if the connection is up, else returns > 0 otherwise. This is mostly useful for a SLIP/PPP connection to test whether it's still up or not and to take corrective action if not. The -v option causes some verbose output to stdout

Why is netup necessary? Because ping often does not return a failure status on many systems if it fails to establish a connection with a host, and thus making it almost useless in a script ... unless extraneous measures & overhead is used.