Is it possible to ping multiple IP addresses simultaneously in a bash script?

The pinging is just to verify an IP in our network is in use. I currently have a script that will sweep through all the addresses but it takes over 14 hours to ping every address in the network.

pseudo-code:

loop start

ping address

increment to next address

end loop

adding & like this:

output=`ping -c 1 -t 2 -q $network$index1.$index2 & | grep min/avg/max`

if [ "$output" ]

then

echo "good $network$index1.$index2"

else

echo "BAD $network$index1.$index2"

fi

does not work. I get this:

pingSweep.sh: command substitution: line 1: syntax error near unexpected token `|'

pingSweep.sh: command substitution: line 1: `ping -c 1 -t 2 -q $network$index1.$index2 & | grep min/avg/max'

running this without the & works exactly the same way if I was to loop through and ping each address individually. But I want to hit them all at once to shorten the time it takes to get all the results.

the problem with adding & at the end of the ping is that I can't redirect the output for some reason. It sees it as an invalid command.

about the above. when I mean it doesn't work, I added the & at the end of the ping and it didn't work.

But as above, it will ping each individually one at a time.