Triple-check if your site is really down.

Been spending all the on the phone explaining to a client and their ISP (Eastern Telecoms) that their site is actually up and not the other way around which is what the ISP is claiming. The client is a bank so there wasn’t anyone in their department with whom I can discuss this in a more technical manner so I had to come up with some solid proof their ISP cannot deny.

So here’s my triple-treat. A three step process to verify if your site is really up or not:

Step 1. DNS Check

This website is one of my most often used tool in checking for a site’s health. A lot of the problems can be easily diagnosed and resolved using DNSReport. To check for your site, just go to www.dnsreport.com and type in your domain (in the format “domain.com” only). A clean bill of health will show all fields in white (sometimes yellow). If there’s a problem, you’d get Error results, red text reports and incomplete page load. See sample here.

Step 2. Ping & Traceroute Results

For international originating IP, I use DNSStuff. For local IP, I use GlobeQuest Utilities (ok, this one becomes useless if the problematic ISP is Globe itself). Ping results will show you a response from your server’s IP. If your site is down or unreachable, it will display a “no reply from …” result. See sample ping results here and traceroute here.

Step 3. Web Proxies

If you can’t convince someone using the 2 tools above, then web proxies like The Cloak will surely do. The Cloak is a free anonymous web surfing proxy and it’s a good tool to check on a site from a remote location (read: IP). If you get a “Page cannot be found” from your PC, try using The Cloak and it might just give you the actual site if it’s really online. See sample URL here.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

12 Comments

Mike says:

3 years ago

There is also another great tool for DNS Health Check that must be mentioned. That diagnose the DNS related problems for the domain
Here is the link
https://dnschecker.org/domain-health-checker.php
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https://www. says:

11 years ago

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However you need to take into account that sometimes you just need to relax and what
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Jonas says:

15 years ago

http://www.downorjustforme.com

Also a good alternative :)
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mrjone says:

16 years ago

http://Go31.com is a fast, free & secure Web Proxy Solution to browse the web.
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isthatsitedown says:

16 years ago

thanks , and if i can i suggest using my site to be sure that it is down or just your isp
is your site down
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Carlos says:

16 years ago

I see you are right, the tool works great but I wonder now why can’t I access the site or ftp it either? is there a fix besides cleaning the DNS and cache?
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Aswathy says:

16 years ago

Well this is something really interesting. At times it gets really hard when we have to convince clients on such situations.
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Paintworkz Web Design says:

17 years ago

Hope that this really convinced your clients. This is an important check list to have, as we can stumble on such situation just anytime
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Abe Olandres says:

18 years ago

They saw their site thru the proxy, didn’t call back, so I guess they’re satisfied.
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Fleeb says:

18 years ago

So was the client convinced?
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Abe Olandres says:

18 years ago

That too. But we notice that most people do not believe in the green and red glowing buttons.

If it’s “page cannot be found” from their browser’s end, it must be down. One needs to do some more convincing and 99% of the time, The Cloak is the ultimate “oh, i see” in-your-face proof.
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Manuel Viloria says:

18 years ago

They might also want to try the “quick check” tool of SiteUptime.com or Alertra.com‘s check url tool.
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