How to test an Internet connection with bash?

Question

How can an internet connection be tested without pinging some website? I mean, what if there is a connection but the site is down? Is there a check for a connection with the

Answer 1

This is notably faster than any solution posted here, and can be used to test a specific host too.

The trick is solving the IP using a less busy DNS solver than the one employed by ping:

validateConnection () {
    host="${1}"
    ip=$(getent ahostsv4 "${host}" | awk '{ print $1 }' | head -n1)
    ping -c1 "${ip}" 2>&1 >"/dev/null"

    if [ "${?}" -ne 0 ]; then
        echo "No connection to: ${host}" >&2
        exit 1
    fi
}