Checking Server Status

I'm looking for a way from my local machine (FC5) via bash to remotely
go out and probe ssh services. We've got internal IP's and External
IP's for each box and I need to be able to test them both, so I'm going
to assume (since I've never scripted a day in my life) from what I've
read that I'd need to do a while loop? I've got to hit a specific port
and if it doesn't time out or gives me "login as:" then it can close
and move on to the next instance.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

typing out ssh -P xxxxx -i /usr/localkeys/some_key.id -l admin
etc..etc.. for each of these servers is beginning to be a huge pain.

-Keith

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