Easiest way to monitor downed servers?

[typhoon43]

Trying to replace our MRTG/BigBro combo with Cacti. I have the Monitor and Threshold plugins installed. I would like something to email me if a server or switch doesn't respond to ping after a certain amount of time. I see the Monitor plugin does the sound alarm, but I can't find any email options. So are you guys setting a LOW Threshold of 0 bytes on the devices to get your down alerts using Threshold instead?

So far, I LOVE this program. Just need to tweak it a bit more so I can finally ditch this Debian box (I have no clue to how to admin it, so it's got to go )

[mgb]

Thold is not only monitoring thresholds. It also sends an email when a device goes down.
Does your email from withine threshold work? You should be able to send yourself a test email.

[typhoon43]

Thold is not only monitoring thresholds. It also sends an email when a device goes down.
Does your email from withine threshold work? You should be able to send yourself a test email.

Yes the threshold emails come in on the alarms I set up as a test. I guess since I have the polling set to 2 rounds before alarm, I'm not getting an email unless a server is down for over 10 minutes.