Difference between CefURLRequest and a browser?

[Peter]

Hello all,

I am connecting to some kind of a weird server, and what I need to do is to check if the server is up (in a loop), before showing the browser window - and CefURLRequest seems to be the best way to do this. However, I found that when I do that, I always get an error from CefURLRequest no matter how many times I retry, but the usual CEF browser maybe returns http error a few times and then starts working.

I am certainly not experienced enough in http magic - so, I wonder how much of this makes sense? Maybe I am using CefURLRequest and/or the browser in a wrong way?
Using a (hidden) browser instance just to test the connection sounds like a waste of resources, and I'd really like to avoid that...