If you're trying to figure out if a failure is from the service you're trying to hit, or if it's the connection of the current device, you need to hit a separat

If you're trying to figure out if a failure is from the service you're trying to hit, or if it's the connection of the current device, you need to hit a separate, third resource. To be resilient/fast enough, for most product you'd probably hit a static file on a well known CDN. If you work at google, google.com is honestly not a bad idea. If you just try to ping the resource you were going to access, for all you know it's the resource that's down.