I would like to use NSConnection/NSDistributedObject for interprocess communication. I would like the client to be able to handle the case where the server is only occasionally reachable. How can I determine if sending a message to the NSConnection will fail or has failed? Currently if my server (the process that has vended the remote object) dies, the client will crash if it sends a selector to the remote object. Ideally I'd like to have a wrapper for the remote object that can lazily instantiate (or reinstantiate) the connection, and return a default value in the case where the connection could not be instantiated, or the connection has failed. I don't really know the correct way to do this using objective c. Here's some pseudocode representing this logic: if myConnection is null: instantiate myConnection if MyConnection is null: return defaultValue try return [myConnection someMethod] catch myConnection = null return defaultValue