By default Net::Ping uses a different method of determining a host's status (TCP echo) than the 'ping' utility (ICMP echo) because doing ICMP echo on unix systems requires root privileges to open a so-called "raw socket".
It does not take root privileges to create an ICMP echo request... you can test it yourself by logging in as a non-root user and playing with the "ping" program. Maybe you have confused this with putting the network card in promiscuous mode which is required for programs like tcpdump?
Update
You know, xmath I never noticed that ping was setuid to root, so that, indeed, was a poor example. *Smiles*
Update 2
Ok, so I went back through all my crafted packet code, and I can not find a single example of being able to craft an ICMP packet without being root. With that said, it does indeed seem that xmath was correct.
