I found the quickest and simplest method of determining if you have any active network connection by using `ifconfig -u | grep ‘ active’ | awk ‘{print $4}’` command from the Terminal. If you have an active connection it will return `active`.
This is the command I use to check for net connections on my [Radio UserLand][1] [offlineToggle][2] tool if the user is running OS X.
[1]: http://radio.userland.com/
[2]: http://radio.weblogs.com/0001017/publicTools/