It would be easier if Nagios supports a plugin that accepts “generic” thresholds, or even better
a plugin that does not rely on thresholds at all. A generic threshold could be something like percentage
of deviation from a normal level. So different servers could have different normal performance levels,
and users do not need to know these numbers in advance. Users just define, for example, 2 standard
deviations away from the average means a critical level. Note that to implement this kind of plugin, we
must allow time for Nagios to collect performance statistics. The advantage is all servers can then use
the same check-ping service, no matter how different their average round-trip delay is, for example.