Is there any way using DatagramSocket class to send an ICMP echo (ping) request?

I would surely like to do a PING from inside my Adobe AIR product. It would solve a lot of monitoring problems.

But evidently a ICMP echo request uses a different TCP header value than UDP or TCP. I see we have a socket class for TCP, a DatagramSocket class for UDP, but evidently there is no apparent way to ping a server. I guess the powers at adobe think this power is inadvisable for mortals? Too bad, because i need to ping some servers on a monitoring program i am writing. I will have to find some other way of detecting life at the other end. Does anyone know of a native extension available that wold do the PING for iOS and Android? I have a very small mobile app i am developing whose purpose is to check on the status of some servers, and an ICMP ping request is just what the doctor ordered. I guess I could write some C program to relay the ping, but that seems silly.

Adobe has done such a good job of giving us additional power in AIR, a shame that we can't get to ICMP ....!