Thanks, Tech, but I think we got our communications confused a little.
Unless there's been a change in one of the more recent version-upgrades, it was my understanding that Always-connected pings to check, while Dialup-only simply checks the modem status.
And I would assume that my modem would be always on and functional (while the computer is, that is), even if the router's off and won't let it communicate, so a modem status-check wouldn't help. On the other hand, using the Always-connected setting would yield unresponsive ping attempts, which is (I think) what I'd want, to let the updater know it couldn't connect at that time.