World of Warcraft Logon Protocol

Hey everyone!
I'm currently trying to make a small WoW launcher that saves a list of servers, ping them, along with some extra features, such as cache cleaning, quick WoW folders links, and so on!
This program should be able to ping the servers, and show their realm(s) and their states in the list. But here comes my problem : I don't know anything about the WoW logon protocol! Can someone explain me how that works, or give me some links?
Thanks in advance!