ping can no longer be used to determine if a host is down -- it never returns and keeps trying to sends packets to that host, even if the -c (packets to send) and -w (wait time) options are being used. It used to work in RH52, it stopped working in RH60 and the introduction of the -w option in RH61 didn't help.
"ping -w 1 unreachable_host" should work just fine in the iputils package from Raw Hide. Otherwise, please repopen this bug with a more specific test case.