Pause a batch file until a host is reachable (using ping)?

I'm looking to add some functionality to a batch file that I've been writing; essentially what happens is I dial up a VPN connection using openvpn and then continue to mount a network drive as well as many other things, what I'm looking to do is:

• Dial the connection via OpenVPN (which I have working fine)
• Ping a host on the other side of the VPN and don't continue through the batch file until this host is reachable.

Currently I've been using a sleep command of 20 seconds which works, but is not a very clean or intelligent way of going about it; I'd imagine I need some sort of loop to attempt to ping the host infinitely until it is reachable before continuing in the batch file. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

from antoher thread on stackoverflow... credit to paxdiablo (find the original post here)

@setlocal enableextensions enabledelayedexpansion
@echo off
set ipaddr=%1
:loop
set state=down
for /f "tokens=5,7" %%a in ('ping -n 1 !ipaddr!') do (
    if "x%%a"=="xReceived" if "x%%b"=="x1," set state=up
)
echo.Link is !state!
ping -n 6 127.0.0.1 >nul: 2>nul:
goto :loop
endlocal

This will give you enough ammo to use and solve your problem