Why You Sometimes Can't Access Your Website or Email and What You Can Do About It.

Newsletter Archive from 9/13/06

Sometimes you just can't access your email or your website, and a lot of the time, all you need to do to resolve it is wait a half hour. Indeed, sometimes that's all you can do.

You've tried rebooting. You've called your ISP and they've said there's nothing wrong with your internet. You may even have tried a virus scan, turned off your firewall, and other things. So you leave the computer frustrated and come back the next day and everything works again. What gives?

It helps to understand the nature of the internet.

There's your computer, and then there's your website/email server that's probably in another state. Then there's your Internet Service Provider's (ISP's) service that connects your computer to the internet.

When you access your web/email server by using your email or looking at your website, you may think your computer is communicating directly with the server, but it's just not so.

It's not a direct connection between your computer and the server. Instead, there's a series of connections that starts at your computer and ends at your server in Texas (or wherever your hosting company's servers are) that may involve up to 20 different computers. The first set of computers after yours is your ISP's. After that, there's a series of "trunk" computers, and then there are a series of computers that can be thought of as the ISP of the server.

If any one of these computers goes down, your email/website service will be suspended until the offending computer is fixed by whoever owns it, or the internet temporarily routes itself around the broken computer. It could be your computer that's having the problem. Or your ISP's. Or an intermediary trunk computer. Or the server's ISP. Or the server itself.

Sometimes the problem can be traced, but since there may be up to 20 computers involved, some of them not under the control of either you, me, your ISP, or your web hosting provider, sometimes all you can do is wait until the internet glitch fixes itself.

What You Can Do

Here's are some logical steps you can take to deduce where the problem is. If one step doesn't help resolve the problem, then move on to the next:

1. Check the obvious. Are you typing the correct URL into the browser? Did you accidentally delete the home page using FTP? Did your web designer make changes recently?

2. Try viewing other websites. If they work but yours doesn't, the problem is either with your hosting service or with a random computer out there in internet land. Skip to step 5.

3. Reboot your computer, and if you have them, your broadband modem and any network boxes. Usually you should turn them all off then turn on the modem, wait 2 minutes, then the network box, wait 2 minutes, then boot up the computer, in that order.

4. If you have an alternate computer in the next room that uses the same ISP as yours, try using that other one. If that one works but your first one doesn't, the problem is with the first computer. Run a virus scan and if that comes out clean, call tech support or try the next step.

5. If you have an alternate computer at an alternate location (or even a friend with a computer in another city or state), try using that one. If that works but your computer doesn't, the problem is either with your computer, your ISP, or a trunk computer. Run a virus scan and if that comes out clean, call tech support or try the next step.

6. Contact your ISP and see if the problem is with your internet service.

7. Contact your hosting service and see if the problem is with your hosting server.

Fires, power outages, storms, floods, and similar events can also cause short or long service outages. If there's a huge storm anywhere in the country, chances are there will be internet outages all over the country.

Chronic Instability

If you're experiencing chronic instability, the problem may be caused by other websites that "live" on your hosting server, and which are hogging all the computer's resources for themselves.

If this is the case, which is relatively common with cheap hosting, then your options are to switch hosting to another cheap host and hope they don't "load up" their servers too much, or to get more dedicated hosting. This latter option will raise your hosting costs from under $100 a year to $50 to $200 a month, but will help ensure a more solid hosting environment.

If you're experiencing web/email problems only late at night, this is because most hosting servers perform "housekeeping" late at night. Backups and automated scripts usually are set to happen after midnight, and these functions can cause your website to slow down. The solution is often to change your hosting provider to one that doesn't perform automatic backups, or to get a more dedicated hosting plan.

If there's a silver lining to any of these clouds, it's that half the time when you're unable to access your website, it's just you that's having the problem. Your customers, having different ISPs or living in different parts of the country, will still be able to access your site because the path their internet connection takes from their computer to the web server is different from your problematic one.

Request a free estimate today, and work can start within a few days.