Pinging SMTP and POP servers to ensure active

[J Malcolm]

I have a remote machine that I want to use to monitor the various servers on my host to make sure everything is up and running.  Basically I want to periodically send a POP command and an SNTP command just to see that I get a response. I can simply do a host connect to the port then go away if I get a response.  But that’s going to tie up a thread for a while until it times out (and James logs an exception).  Is there a simple benign sequence of commands (like a ping) that will keep the server happy when I poll it?   I need a sequence for SMTP and POP. Thanks. Jerry