My Internet is Down!?

Some information about wider connectivity issues. Last edited to update Keynote link and add info on their service:

Internet Storm Center (from SANS) gives information on virus/malware activity affecting internet connections.

Internet Health Report (from Keynote) provides a table showing connectivity between major US ISPs; they also give connectivity details for various time ranges and now between major US centres and international locations.

My internet is down, what do I do?

• Are all websites affected? Is email affected? Try using a different email address or accessing another website. Google.com and Yahoo.com are good choices of test site as is your ISP’s website.
• Check your network cables are plugged in, restart your router, reboot your computer.
• Check with your ISP (call them on the phone!) that there are no outages. Often ISPs seem to have transient network problems, particularly at busy times, and trying again in 15 mins may be all that’s required.
• If you can access the net but can’t access your website or your email then there are a few other things to try …

Check your server is up

Check your email server is up (POP email)

You can check that your email server is up using a program called telnet. Start > Run … > telnet. Then enter connect example.com 110. Next enter user yourusername followed by pass yourpassword (making appropriate entries for your username and your password).

If you are able to log in then you can type list, followed by retr 1 (or any other number shown in the list), finally quit to end your telnet connection (your session may close too).

If you can access your email this way then there are no connection problems, you should check your software configuration.

Check your email server is up (IMAP)

As for POP (above) but the commands are a little different.

At a telnet prompt enter connect example.com 110. Next enter user yourusername followed by pass yourpassword (making appropriate entries for your username and your password).

If you are able to log in then you can type list, followed by retr 1 (or any other number shown in the list), finally quit to end your telnet connection (your session may close too).

Some technical explanation:

If you want to know what’s happening then first you need to understand a little of how you connect and receive services from the internet.

Usually domestic users get connection from their computer to a modem or router provided by an ISP. That box is connected to either a cable companies connection or to a domestic phone line. At the other end of that connection is either an exchange to connect onward to the ISP’s computers or the networking equipment to connect to those computers themselves.

So at the end of that line then your ISP connects to the internets “backbone”. That’s as far as we need to go here. If there’s an outage of some sort then it’s either along this route to the backbone or it’s along the corresponding route from the content providers side (ie the route the content of a webpage takes from where it is hosted to the backbone).