We are using WCF/HTTP based application to send messages from a client to a server and need a quick way of detecting that the server has gone down handling messages. Ideally we need to detect that the server has gone down before sending the message. I am investigating using Reliable messaging as this looks to send a "Are you still there message?" just before each request. However, what I can't find is any way of detecting if this initial check fails in my code - is this possible?
I found a couple of articles which suggested performing some form of 'PING' to detect if the server is still there but if possible I would rather use Reliable Messaging as this seems a cleaner solution.
Any advice would be much appreciated.