Testing for Internet Connection

[Marc Christiansen]

Alex Marandon <invalid at nowhere.invalid.org> wrote:
> Alexnb wrote:
>> I am wondering, is there a simple way to test for Internet connection? If
>> not, what is the hard way :p
> 
> Trying to fetch the homepage from a few major websites (Yahoo, Google, 
> etc.)? If all of them are failing, it's very likely that the connection 
> is down

or there is a mandatory proxy...

Does it count as internet connection, when only port 80 and port 443 are
accessible and those require going through a proxy (very strict firewall
policy)? Or everything requires using SOCKS?
Just some possible problems I came up with. I don't know how often some-
thing like this will happen.

Ciao
  Marc