C
Cliff Wells
Hi,
I'm writing an application that needs to know if an Internet connection
is available. Basically, I want to have something similar to what a lot
of email clients have, where the app can work either in "online" or
"offline" mode (it keeps a cache of downloaded info, so it can work
without a connection if needed).
The basic problem is this: it downloads info (RSS feeds) from a variety
of sources. Any one (or more) of these could conceivably fail to
download, so simply waiting for a timeout isn't sufficient (not easy to
differentiate between having a bad server and the client not having a
connection). Further, if it waits (say 30s) for the timeout to occur,
this is going to be a bit annoying to the user.
I've considered trying to connect to a stable host (i.e. Google) and if
that fails then assume the client can't connect to the internet, but
this seems like a sub-optimal solution.
Is there any way to reliably determine the state of the client's
internet connectivity?
Regards,
Cliff
I'm writing an application that needs to know if an Internet connection
is available. Basically, I want to have something similar to what a lot
of email clients have, where the app can work either in "online" or
"offline" mode (it keeps a cache of downloaded info, so it can work
without a connection if needed).
The basic problem is this: it downloads info (RSS feeds) from a variety
of sources. Any one (or more) of these could conceivably fail to
download, so simply waiting for a timeout isn't sufficient (not easy to
differentiate between having a bad server and the client not having a
connection). Further, if it waits (say 30s) for the timeout to occur,
this is going to be a bit annoying to the user.
I've considered trying to connect to a stable host (i.e. Google) and if
that fails then assume the client can't connect to the internet, but
this seems like a sub-optimal solution.
Is there any way to reliably determine the state of the client's
internet connectivity?
Regards,
Cliff