Re: Is there an easy way to monitor for Internet failures?

Your belt and suspenders approach would get you in trouble here. Our
network consultant likes to occasionally renumber the IP addresses on our
servers. Drives me batshirt crazy. When I try to object he goes over my
head and ties up the boss time until he acquiesces if for no other reason
than to get him out of there and allow him to move on. Your host table
entries would leave you out in the cold.

We don't HAVE a network consultant, and while I've recently ADDED new internal IP addresses to our 3 network-accessible Midrange boxes (the fourth, where the family jewels are kept, is ONLY accessible via Twinax and QIC), in anticipation that we might someday need to get everything off of the zero subnet (or whatever the Hell it's called) for VPN purposes, we don't move servers around for anything less than router replacement. If that. If there's a network consultant moving things around for no apparent reason, that in itself would be reason for an internal DNS, but that reason is absent here.

And that's entirely separate from the belt-and-suspenders approach on products that need to "phone home"; they're accessing either web services or FTP, on well-known ports, on fixed public IP addresses (which would not change for anything less than a change of either ISP or hosting company).

And adding host table entries redefining unwanted domains as "nowhere" has two advantages over adware-blocking software: it's free, and it's absolute.

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JHHL