Both Invoke-WebRequest and Invoke-RestMethod are simple-to-use cmdlets to download information from the web. For example, this simple code can query the registration information for any public IP address and return its registered owner:
$IPAddress = '51.107.59.180' Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "http://ipinfo.io/$IPAddress/json" -UseBasicParsing
ip : 51.107.59.180 city : Zürich region : Zurich country : CH loc : 47.3667,8.5500 org : AS8075 Microsoft Corporation postal : 8090 timezone : Europe/Zurich readme : https://ipinfo.io/missingauth
If something goes wrong while your code communicates with the internet, in Windows PowerShell there was a hard-coded timeout of 300 seconds. So even if your router went down, your PowerShell script would eventually return.
In PowerShell 7, the inner workings of both cmdlets changed significantly. They currently do not have a connection timeout anymore so if your connection breaks, your script will hang forever.
Fortunately, this bug is currently being resolved and will be fixed in one of the upcoming PowerShell 7 updates.
