Check for internet connection

Question

What is the most fastest and most efficient way to check for an internet connection.

Answer 1

Something like this should work.

System.Net.WebClient

public static bool CheckForInternetConnection()
{
    try
    {
        using (var client = new System.Net.WebClient())
        {
            client.DownloadString(new Uri("http://www.google.com"));
            return true;
        }
    }
    catch
    {
        return false;
    }
}

Answer 2

There is absolutely no way you can reliably check if there is an internet connection or not (I assume you mean access to the internet).

You can, however, request resources that are virtually never offline, like pinging google.com or something similar. I think this would be efficient.

Ping myPing = new Ping();
String host = "google.com";
byte[] buffer = new byte[32];
int timeout = 1000;
PingOptions pingOptions = new PingOptions();
PingReply reply = myPing.Send(host, timeout, buffer, pingOptions);
if (reply.Status == IPStatus.Success {
  // presumably online
}

Answer 3

public static bool HasConnection()
{
    try
    {
        System.Net.IPHostEntry i = System.Net.Dns.GetHostEntry("www.google.com");
        return true;
    }
    catch
    {
        return false;
    }
}

That works

Answer 4

Instead of checking, just perform the action (web request, mail, ftp, etc.) and be prepared for the request to fail, which you have to do anyway, even if your check was successful.

Consider the following:

1 - check, and it is OK
2 - start to perform action 
3 - network goes down
4 - action fails
5 - lot of good your check did

If the network is down your action will fail just as rapidly as a ping, etc.

1 - start to perform action
2 - if the net is down(or goes down) the action will fail