>>>>Thanks for all the advice, everyone.
>>>>
>>>>Ed, I picked up the suggestion of trying to connect with a known IP address from the West Wind site, and thought I might use the GetIPFromDomain() function. It gave the correct answer (from cached data?) after I went off line in the middle of an email session. It may work for testing when I start sending, though. I'll check the earlier thread for more info.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Here's what I do . . .
>>>
>>>set classlib to wwipstuff addi
>>>o = create('wwipstuff')
>>>lcip=''
>>>* check to see if you can access the web server
>>>lcip= o.GetIpFromDomain("www.Yourdomain.com")
>>>if len(lcip)<12
>>> messagebox('Not Connected to the Internet'+crlf+' or the Web Server is experiencing problems. . . Check Connection!')
>>> return
>>>endif
>>>
>>>Works like a charm for me.
>>
>>This looks good, but before I adapt it, I would like to be confident that there are no circumstances where an OS or a router would cache a DNS listing... seems like a good candidate for a network timesaver (in a bad way) to me...
>
>Actually, I haven't run this code on the server. I use it in client pcs that are doing ftp uploads and it hasn't failed yet(I know I shouldn't have said that!)< G > I guess you could always run a nbtstat -R to clear that cache, then run the above code.

nbtstat will reload all of the listings in the lmhosts file, but I think it still won't guarantee that the router won't cache the name. And even if the router or OS doesn't do this now, there's no guarantee that future versions won't. This is an inherent risk with depending on something that wasn't designed to tell you the information you ar depending on it from. (Not that it's a bad idea- so far in fact, its the best idea I've heard yet.)

I am really only guessing at the possibility here- and waiting for someone more knowledgeable to confirm or deny my fears.