> the original developer used a timer to issue a call to the web service as sort of a "Ping"
>
>I might be wrong on this but AFAICS a ping will only tell you that the IP address is accessible - no guarantee that IIS is warmed up and running so I can't really see the ping performing a useful function for the time it takes ?

From his description this isn't the generic ping, but a simple call to a web service. In that case it would ensure that IIS is ready. But really, just make the normal call and handle the failure.