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.

9 Responses to “Triple-check if your site is really down.”

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Manuel Viloria replied on Jul 13th, 2006 at 8:57 pm (1)

They might also want to try the “quick check” tool of SiteUptime.com or Alertra.com’s check url tool.
yuga replied on Jul 13th, 2006 at 9:48 pm (2)

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.
Fleeb replied on Jul 14th, 2006 at 3:16 am (3)

So was the client convinced?
yuga replied on Jul 14th, 2006 at 7:27 am (4)

They saw their site thru the proxy, didn’t call back, so I guess they’re satisfied.
Paintworkz Web Design replied on May 8th, 2008 at 5:34 pm (5)

Hope that this really convinced your clients. This is an important check list to have, as we can stumble on such situation just anytime
Aswathy replied on Sep 16th, 2008 at 8:55 pm (6)

Well this is something really interesting. At times it gets really hard when we have to convince clients on such situations.
Carlos replied on Nov 7th, 2008 at 1:30 am (7)

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?
isthatsitedown replied on Jan 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 am (8)

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
mrjone replied on May 28th, 2009 at 8:56 am (9)

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