I know that there are several ways to keep tabs on a web server's availability (like, writing a plain old .BAT file which regularly pings and outputs results to a text file) but I just can't find a simple thing out there that does just that. There are several swiss army knives that I have found, which offer an incredible array of server probing, but I don't want overkill - I'm just looking for an equivalent of what I used to have on a Mac in ye olden days: a very simple logger.

Now here's the corker: I'm not really that much interested in knowing the server's uptime - which is why I only need one polite and unobtrusive ping (or HEAD request) every 30 minutes or so.

I really want to know if my Internet connection's up - and keep a text log (.CSV) of the date- and time stamped results. And I don't want to run stuff on either my modem or router, so a regular low-frequency ping would be cool.

Any suggestions? It's amazing what Google turns up looking for example for the terms "web server uptime logger" but I'm not really into keylogging and/or malware (there's a myriad of nasty sites that turn up when you look for that stuff, so be careful!).

Thanks in advance!

If you have not found anything yet take a look at Servers Alive.

http://www.woodstone.nu/salive/download.asp

It works great, does some really awesome stuf or a simple ping and http request. What ever you want. Easy to setup as well.