looking for small freeware library that support http connections

Hello all
first of all the reason im looking for this library is that i need to check if my application
has internet connection in the host computer , the easiest idea for me is to check http connection every N seconds
for that i need some kind of simple cross platform library that support http connections.
my question is divided to 2 first of all
1 is it good solution for application to check internet connection ?
2 where i can find such small lib ?