Best way to check if there is internet?

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, 7 Feb 2022 at 20:18, Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer
<arj.python at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> Using the standard library or 3rd party libraries, what's the
> best way to check if there is internet? Checking if google.com
> is reachable is good but I wonder if there is a more native,
> protocol-oriented
> way of knowing?
>

What do you mean by "if there is internet"? How low a level of
connection do you want to test? You could ping an IP address that you
know and can guarantee will respond. You could attempt a DNS lookup.
You could try an HTTP request. Each one can fail in different ways,
for different reasons. It's best to test what you actually care about.

> Even this URL recommends checking if a domain is up as a way to check for
> internet connectivity:
> https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/checking-network-connectivity-when-using-python-and-ibm-resilient-circuits

That talks about a misconfigured proxy as being the most likely cause.
Is that something you're trying to test for?

There is no single concept of "there is internet". (Other than, in a
trivial sense, that the internet does exist.) What you need to know is
"can I use the internet?", and ultimately, that depends on what you
need it to do.

ChrisA