What's going on with the Internet?

[JailForBush]

Over the past several days, the Internet has been down for brief periods several times - I THINK. Maybe there's just something wrong with my computer, but it sure seemed to be the Internet.

It isn't a serious issue (as far as I know), but I just wondered what would cause the Internet to shut down so frequently. Is Microsoft testing more software?

Has anyone else noticed this?

[maveric]

1. Perhaps Homeland Security ala Ashcroft...

is infecting the net with their bugs of some sort.
:tinfoilhat:

[Walt Starr]

2. Who is your ISP?

We had problems in our Texas office with Verizon DSL earlier today.

[welshTerrier2]

3. probably your machine or your ISP

i did notice numerous dead links on yahoo this morning ...

but, no, the net was not "down for brief periods" today ...

give your ISP a call and ask them why you're having problems ...

[Journeyman]

4. Do you think, maybe. . .

it could by your ISP that's been down? Somehow, a single portal into the grid being down seems slightly more reasonable than the momentary loss of the near infinite web.

[ParanoidPat]

5. It's not the Internet.....

.....It's either your computer or your ISP.
Bookmark these links for future reference. :)

http://internethealthreport.com/ Internet Health Report

http://internethealthreport.com/24/ Internet Health Report for the last day

http://www.internettrafficreport.com/main.htm Internet Traffic Report

If you're on DSL or other high speed service try this link to tweak your computer for better service. Click the Tests + Tools tab on the left.

http://www.dslreports.com/

Good Luck!

[onecitizen]

6. Not so here..........

everything OK with internet here.

[papau]

7. half speed cable and DSL - I noticed also - is carnivore being installed?

The new internet equivalent to the old telephone phrase recognition system where use of bad words like "bomb" would get that 20 sec snip before and after of conversation passed via the computer to an E-4 in Toronto (why outside the US?) to decide if the E-6 should review and maybe order up a real investigation is called "Carnivore" and is to be installed about now.

[GiovanniC]

9. Is That Related to Echelon?

n/t

[Terran]

8. Er, not possible

The Internet cannot be "down." That's the whole point of the Internet: it's nearly impossible to control or make it go away.

[KoKo]

10. Nope. Dial-Up with Earthlink. No problems. Did you reboot your computer

or do scan disk and defrag? Sometimes simple stuff works wonders. Or your ISP could have had a glitch.

[Minstrel Boy]

11. I don't know. Everywhere I turn, someone is trying to enlarge my penis.

It's the damnedest thing.

[0rganism]

12. Didn't notice a thing. Here's something you can try next time...

If you're running any reasonable OS, you can pop open a "command prompt" or shell and type the following:

ping localhost

This will check that your TCP/IP protocol is working. Next, check your cable connection by pinging your "gateway" host or your DNS server:

ping my.gatewayhost.com (or whatever it is)

If this one responds with times under 100 ms (or 30 ms, if it's on the same LAN), things are probably working okay from a hardware standpoint. Now ping whatever host you're having trouble with:

ping www.mit.edu

If you get a response like "Destination host unreachable", there's probably a network isolation problem somewhere in the routing cloud. If you get a "time out" response, the problem is generally with the destination host -- it could be overloaded or rebooting or configured not to respond to ICMP packets, you won't know immediately. If you get a response like "unknown host", there is a DNS issue, preventing hosts from associating a name to an IP address. If you know the IP address, try pinging that directly.

ping 18.181.0.31

Another thing you can do is a "traceroute" (or "tracert" in MS command prompt lingo). This is a more complete way of checking how your packets are routed.

traceroute -D www.mit.edu
or
tracert -d www.mit.edu

This should give you some idea of where routing connections are breaking down (if they are), as it pushes a series of packets along specific paths to reach your destination, one step at a time. It's also somewhat informative of where your stuff is going when you send and receive packets. Try it just for fun, with or without the -d.

(Note: some firewalls don't allow ICMP diagnostic packets, as they can be used for certain types of DDOS attacks, so YMMV)