>Sysinst only wants to know the gateway is alive in case routing is
>needed to reach the FTP host.  A 'ping' is a fair test of aliveness, but
>perhaps not the best (more below).

ping is good enough, since regardless of the success or failure of the
actual ping command (as modified by the gateway's behavior regarding
ping packets), the output of a 'route get' command issued on the
gateway address should contain the string LLINFO if it's up.

-- 
|-----< "CODE WARRIOR" >-----|
codewarrior@daemon.org             * "ah!  i see you have the internet
twofsonet@graffiti.com (Andrew Brown)                that goes *ping*!"
andrew@crossbar.com       * "information is power -- share the wealth."