getmyip doesn't function when there isn't a Internet connection...

[choksi81]

It's unclear why getmyip() should raise an error if the host is not connected to the Internet. Yes, this is okay, according to the specification of the API, but really doesn't make much sense. It should choose a non-loopback IP instead (if available) or loopback if not.

This happens on my Linux laptop, but does not seem to happen on Prof Cappos's Mac laptop (possibly).

The error seems to come from the line:
sockobj.connect((external_ip, external_port))
in _get_localIP_to_remoteIP.

The error raised by the line looks like the following:
error 101 Network is unreachable

This is also being tracked on the AFFIX tracker as: https://affix.poly.edu/projects/project/ticket/6