I have a smart home gym that does not run unless it successfully reaches the servers first (I found out after the return period was over, while my WiFi was down for a week). This really shoved this issue to the forefront of my mind and I am now trying to understand the packets it sends and receives with the hope of running a fake host on my home server, redirecting the traffic to a local destination and returning fake data to trick it into thinking it succeeded the fetch and finishes bootup.
The idea that I can't work out because of an internet outage upsets me greatly. Also their recent updates have added more ads into the gym interface which I am not a fan of, so I might just never have it connect to their servers ever again if I get my workaround working.