How to Handle an Internet Outage

canadian_right writes "Do you know what to do if your internet connection goes down? This article includes many helpful tips, including a functional use for AOL disks."

Comments

Why I like DSL

[jchawk]

I have DSL service at home, because it runs over the phone line which does not rely on the same source of power that my house uses, I can stay connected to the internet through power outages. I have my computers, switch and dsl modem plugged into UPS backup power supplies. . . If the power goes out, my network is still online and running.

Thankfully my internet service provider is rock solid and so is the network they operate on. My remote has had about 30 minutes of down time in the past 2 1/2 years, and it was a scheduled upgrade to the remote. :-)

Re:You Know you have a problem when

[merlin_jim]

You have your ISP Service Desk on Speed Dial.

RoadRunner is on my cell phone's voice dial list. I just pick it up and say roadrunner.

I navigate the menu to get to roadrunner level 2 support by pressing
1,3,1,2,3, which means: 1 (english), 3 (existing customer / high speed internet), 1 (road runner), 2 (I do not want to refresh my converter box), 3 (the scripts for options 1 and 2, which are rebooting the modem and rebooting the computer respectively, did not solve my problem)

Needless to say, roadrunner in my area is not incredibly reliable.

Actual, more accurately, AVP2 has a documented problem with it's network stack and the Toshiba cable modem. For the curious, a NATting firewall fixed it. D-Link DI 614+ is I believe the model I got.

When Slammer first appeared...

[BigDish]

I live on a college campus with a high number of geeks. Last year when Slammer first reared its head, it brought our network to it's knees. We couldn't even do anything on the local LAN, much less get out to the Internet. It was so strange, because everyone came out of their dorm rooms and seemed bored that evening.

I rarely notice when my DSL goes out

[swillden]

The Linux box that acts as my router is configured to automatically bring up a dialup connection if packets stop flowing over the DSL. Of course, my dialup provider is the same as my DSL provider, so it's certainly possible that both could go out at once, but it hasn't happened yet. They don't seem to be able to keep the DSL up as reliably for some reason.

Anyway, every few months or so I'll notice that my network connection is slow, and when I check the router I notice that ppp0 is up. The most common way that I notice DSL outages (which seem to happen every other month or so) is when my cellphone rings. My office phone is set up to automatically forward to my home office and then to my cell (if I don't pick up the home office line), so I notice the DSL outage by observing that my cell phone rings first, since the phone line is tied up by the dialup connection.