[the-facts-machine] How to Check Your Internet Connection

From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <the-facts-machine@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2014 16:01:44 -0400
BlankHow to check your Internet connection By Rob Pegoraro Special for USA 
TODAY

Question: I think my Internet connection is down, but I'm not sure. How can 
I tell that it's not just me?

Answer: I suspect a great many Time Warner Cable subscribers were asking 
variations of this question when the No. 2 cable-Internet service in the 
U.S. suffered a massive outage across the country caused by a configuration 
mistake.

My first move when I think my own connection has dropped is to swear at the 
computer, then furiously click the "reload" button in my browser, then maybe 
shake my fist at the screen in futility. That rarely works for me, and I 
don't suggest you try it either.

Instead, take the following troubleshooting steps, and take deep breaths 
between each.

¦ Try clicking elsewhere. If a site as prominent as Google's home page 
doesn't load, you can be assured that the fault isn't limited to one company 
or
even in a key component of the Internet's infrastructure like Amazon Web 
Hosting (which in the past has >broken "AWS"-based services like Instagram, 
Airbnb and Netflix during outages.)

¦ Check the connections in your home. If your laptop is linked to your 
router via WiFi, try plugging in an Ethernet cable instead.

¦ Reboot the router and then, if applicable, the cable or DSL modem. Sorry 
to sound like stereotypical tech support , but sometimes restarting the 
networking hardware in your home fixes the problem.

¦ Does DNS need debugging? Every now and then, an Internet provider's domain 
name servers - the directory-assistance system that translate requests for 
addresses like usatoday.com into numerical Internet Protocol coordinates - 
will break . In that case, you can route around the problem by using another 
DNS.

Now might be a good time to bookmark the setup instructions for the free, 
alternate services of https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/ 
Google and https://store.opendns.com/setup/ OpenDNS

In each case, you type a few new sets of numbers into your computer or 
tablet's Internet settings.

¦ See what other people are saying. Search Twitter on your phone for updates 
from your provider's account or complaints about it. If it's a reasonably 
large company, see if it's mentioned on http://downdetector.com/ 
downdetector.com
or the forums at
http://broadbandreports.com/ BroadbandReports.com .

The troubleshooting step that should be on this list but isn't is this:
Check your Internet provider's status page on your phone. Unfortunately, 
most of the big-name ISPs don't offer any such help. The mobile sites of 
Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and AT&T don't provide any obvious way 
http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status to se
http://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/
if their services are working or not. Cablevision's Optimum does, but you 
have to log in first. To see how that could work in an alternate universe, 
see the system-status dashboards of "cloud" services like 
http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=statusGoogle Apps or 
http://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/
Apple's iCloud . Or bring up the average electric utility's mobile site: Con 
Ed in New York, Pepco in Washington and Pacific Gas and Electric in San 
Francisco, among many others, have outage-map pages a tap or two away.

Tip: Your phone is probably already available as a backup hot spot. If you 
need some emergency bandwidth, the answer is probably right in your pocket: 
Most of the nationwide wireless carriers include tethering, or the option to 
use your phone as a portable Wi-Fi hot spot, in their standard plans. But 
finding it can require some tapping around.
On an iPhone, open the Settings app and select Cellular. In Android, it 
depends. In a stock configuration on a Nexus phone, you'll find it in the 
Settings app under a "More..." heading; on a Samsung Galaxy S 5, it's behind 
a "More networks" item in the Settings app; on other phones, you may see a 
separate hot spot app.
The two exceptions to watch out for: Verizon's "Single Line Smartphone" 
plans (on which tethering
isn't allowed at all, although I've had two VzW customer-service reps tell 
me otherwise in Web chats) and Sprint's single-line plans (on which it's 
usually $10 extra for a gigabyte's worth of tethering).


Steve
[the-facts-machine] How to Check Your Internet Connection

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