Connecting to check a SOAP service is up

I am trying to connect to a SOAP service, that's all fine. But I have been asked to check whether that service is up before connecting, if not, connect to the service on another server.

Any ideas of how to do this? Thanks in advance.

Is it possible to use Exceptions to handle this? When webservices method can't be called an exception will be thrown and if exception is about connectivity then you can connect to other webservice.