HTTP perhaps. Look at resulting data. Viola !!
Regards,
Richard Schoen
RJS Software Systems Inc.
Where Information Meets Innovation
Document Management, Workflow, Report Delivery, Forms and Business Intelligence
Email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site:
http://www.rjssoftware.com
Tel: (952) 736-5800
Fax: (952) 736-5801
Toll Free: (888) RJSSOFT
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message: 4
date: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 16:12:56 -0700
from: "James H. H. Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Is there a better way to determine whether a URL is
reachable?
This is profoundly weird.
We just changed ISPs, and I'm updating our installers to reflect that.
And I experienced some weirdness.
It seems that our new ISP has something called "web address error redirect service," that's enabled by default.
This caused me some (as I said) profound weirdness, trying to test an update to one of our installer programs. It pings our FTP server's URL, to verify that it can find it, and failing that, it tries the IP address.
With my WinDoze box still on the old DNS addresses, and my Mac tied up doing something else, I was getting the expected "not found" messages when pinging from a WinDoze command line, or using a browser on WinDoze.
I didn't find out about the "web address error redirect service" until I got my Mac (already on the new DNS) back, and tried to open test.test from a browser, and got a page of "suggestions."
Until I disabled it, this "web address error redirect service" was giving PING a resolution on intentionally nonexistent URLs.
Is there a better way, assuming nothing installed above the OS, to check whether a domain is reachable, than by pinging it? A way that is immune to this "web address error redirect service" (just in case some customer actually leaves it turned on)?
midrange.com
