any way to detect condition "connected to ISP but not internet"?

[Josh Mellicker]

I just thought I'd ask the many networking gurus here:

It seems easy with Revolution to check if connected to the internet,  
if not connected, after a timeOutInterval, an error is returned and it  
can be dealt with, no problem.

However...

Here at our office, we got Time Warner cable internet a few months  
ago, and while it is speedy (20 mbits d/l!) every few weeks we  
encounter a strange and perhaps rare situation where:

1. we are connected to our ISP

2. but our ISP is not connected to the internet


On OS X, network diagnostics show:

Ethernet = green
Network Settings = green
ISP = green
Internet = red
Server = red

When we encounter this "false connection" condition, a browser, rather  
than saying "cannot get web page because we're offline" will hang  
forever.


The danger here that we should all be aware of, is that if you sell an  
app that, for example, checks for updates upon launch, if your  
customer has this weird connectivity situation, your app will freeze  
and the customer is unable to get past this and use the app they  
legitimately paid you for.

Even if the connectivity problem is rare, this is a situation we want  
to avoid at any cost, so we have no automatic connection routines. If  
they initiate a network operation, and the app hangs, they can force  
quit and launch again, and not do that anymore now that they know  
better :-)


So, I wondered if any of you had any experience, workarounds or ideas  
for detecting this "false connection" condition.