How to Ping List of Host Names and Output Results to CSV in PowerShell

Pinging a device or hostname is a basic feature available in PowerShell. You can send echo requests and test for ping connectivity using the Test-Connection and Test-NetConnection cmdlet.

It is a lot useful for network administrators. This tutorial will teach you to ping a list of hostnames and output the results to a CSV in PowerShell.

Use Test-Connection to Ping a List of Host Names and Output the Results to a CSV in PowerShell

The Test-Connection cmdlet sends Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request packets, or pings, to one or more remote machines and returns the echo response replies. You can easily determine whether a specific computer can be reached across an IP network or not.

Here, we have a list of hostnames in the file test.txt.

Get-Content test.txt

Output:

www.google.com
www.delftstack.com

The following script pings a list of hostnames in the file test.txt and outputs the result to a result.csv file.

$testOutput = @()
$testnames = Get-Content "test.txt"
foreach ($name in $testnames) {
    if (Test-Connection -ComputerName $name -Count 1 -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue) {
        $testOutput += "$name,Up"
        Write-Host "$Name,Up"
    }
    else {
        $testOutput += "$name,Down"
        Write-Host "$Name,Down"
    }
}
$testOutput | Out-File "result.csv"

In the above PowerShell script, the Get-Content cmdlet is used to get a list of hostnames in the test.txt file and the ForEach loop to iterate through each hostname.

The Test-Connection cmdlet pings each hostname from the list. If the ping status is true, the hostname is stored in the $testOutput variable as Up; it stores the hostname as Down in the $testOutput variable.

The $testOutput variable is piped to the Out-File cmdlet, which sends output to a file result.csv. The content in the file is displayed the same as in the terminal.

Output:

www.google.com,Up
www.delftstack.com,Down

We hope this article helps you understand how to ping a list of hostnames and output the results to a .csv file.