From: Yohanes Santoso <ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2002-06-17T22:31:48+09:00
Subject: Re: network connection test

Pierre Brengard <pbrengard@bct-technology.com> writes:

> Hello,
> 
> Has someone any clue to write a test to see if the network is
> accessible rather than this ugly method ? :
> 
> 
> require 'socket'
> def test_network_connection
>        begin
>      	addr = IPSocket.getaddress
> 	TCPSocket.gethostbyname('localhost')[0]

Um... localhost (127.0.0.1) is always accessible in UNIX. I believe
the same holds for Windows too. Also, 127.0.0.0/255 is always
accessible too. It is a predefined connection in any TCP stack I've
encountered (VMS, UNIX, Windows). No packet is ever sent on the wire
when connecting to 127.0.0.1.

I believe that testing connection to your gateway produce at least a
good method to ensure that at least connection to your gateway is
still functioning. Unfortunately, the method of getting the gateway of
a particular machine is platform dependent.

YS.