Because of the sensitive nature of my job, any attempts to get around failures in the network will probably result in job termination. So yeah, not gonna attempt that, cuz even if a non-adept admin lets it go for a while, eventually someone does and then they freak and blow things out of purportion, etc, etc, etc.
I think I'm gonna look into the feasibility of minicpan... it just seems like a hassle, but then, my employers would say that's a good thing.