On Thu, 26 Feb 2009, Jan de Lint wrote:

> What would be the optimal and safest way to detect whether a server is
> reachable?

That depends on what you want to find out and what you think is "optimal" may
not match what others think.

> In my case an html server. Request some header data?

Yes, that's certainly one way that's usually fine enough.

> I have the impression that the name look-up sometimes at first needs
> considerable time to start up.

Sure, name resolving can take some time.

-- 
  / daniel.haxx.se