I have a lot of trouble with the internet connectivity in the program I am working on and it all seems to spawn from some issue with the proxy settings. Most of the issues at this point are fixed, but the issue I am having now is that my method of testing the proxy settings makes some users wait for long periods of time.

Here is what I do:

System.Net.WebClient webClnt = new System.Net.WebClient();

webClnt.Proxy = proxy;
webClnt.Credentials = proxy.Credentials;

byte[] tempBytes;
try
{
    tempBytes = webClnt.DownloadData(url.Address);
}
catch
{
    //Invalid proxy settings

    //Code to handle the exception goes here
}

This is the only way that I've found to test if the proxy settings are correct. I tried making a web service call to our web service, but no proxy settings are needed when making the call. It will work even if I have bogus proxy settings. The above method, though, has no timeout member that I can set that I can find and I use the DownloadData as opposed to the DownloadDataAsync because I need to wait til the method is done so that I can know if the settings are correct before continuing on in the program.

Any suggestions on a better method or a work around for this method is appreciated.

Mike