Function to Ping a website

Is there a way to get php to ping a website? My idea is to create a function that does this and to then call it with a scheduled event via WP’s cron utility.

I need to ping an address that will cause my mailing manager (dada) to check a pop3 account.

I tried using crontab on my server via ssh, but my host said that I probably won’t be able to get it to work because of querys (?) in the address.