upordown.online ยท troubleshooting guide
Website not loading? Work out whether it's the site or you
A page that won't open can mean a broken server, a regional network problem, or something on your own device. This guide walks through the checks in the order that settles the question fastest.
Check a website now1. Ask: does it work from somewhere else?
The single most useful test is a second viewpoint. If a site answers from another network, it's probably up and the problem is closer to you. Quick ways to get one:
- Switch your phone from Wi-Fi to mobile data. That changes your provider, router and DNS in one move.
- Use an online checker that tests the site from its own server, such as the website down checker on upordown.online.
- Look at whether other people are reporting problems right now, and check the service's official status page (remember it's the company's own statement, often updated late).
2. Read the result layer by layer
Every request goes through the same steps. Where it stops tells you who has to fix it.
| Step | What failing looks like | What it usually means |
|---|---|---|
| DNS lookup | "Server not found", NXDOMAIN | Your DNS resolver is failing, or the domain's DNS is broken or expired |
| Connection | Refused or timed out | Nothing is listening, a firewall is dropping traffic, or the host is gone |
| Secure handshake (TLS) | Certificate warning | Expired or wrong certificate, or your device clock is wrong |
| Server answer | Error code or a very slow reply | See status codes below |
Status codes, briefly
- 200 / 301 / 302: the site is up.
- 403 / 429: the server is reachable but blocking automated requests. Not an outage.
- 503: the server is alive but overloaded or in maintenance.
- 500 / 502 / 504: something behind the site is failing. This is a real outage.
A single failed request isn't an incident. Networks drop packets. Retry once after a couple of seconds before deciding a site is down.
3. If it's you: check your own connection
- DNS. If every site fails by name but connections to an IP address work, DNS is the problem. Restart the router, then try a public resolver such as
1.1.1.1or8.8.8.8. - Stability. High latency or jitter makes pages hang and calls choppy even when a speed test looks fine. Try moving closer to the router or pausing big downloads.
- Device clock. A clock that's far off breaks secure connections (
NET::ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID) and authenticator codes. Turn on automatic time. - VPN or ad blocker. Some services block VPN and data-center addresses. Turn them off briefly to test.
- Cache. Try a private window, sign out and in again, or update the app.
A browser-based test like Is my internet down? runs the DNS, latency, jitter and clock checks for you, and the results stay on your device.
4. Try it from the command line
If you're comfortable in a terminal, these reproduce the steps above:
dig +short example.com # DNS
nc -vz -w 6 example.com 443 # connection
openssl s_client -connect example.com:443 \
-servername example.com </dev/null # TLS
curl -s -o /dev/null --connect-timeout 6 --max-time 10 \
-w '%{http_code} ttfb=%{time_starttransfer}s\n' https://example.com
5. Keep an eye on the services you rely on
Rather than refreshing status pages during an incident, follow outages passively:
- Feeds: Atom feeds per service or for all outages, usable in any feed reader and in Slack or Teams via their RSS integrations.
- Badges: live SVG status badges for docs and READMEs.
- API: a read-only JSON API, no key needed, CORS enabled, 60 requests per minute.
Details and copy-paste snippets: badges, feeds and API.
Other free tools
- Live outages: services failing right now and the past week's confirmed outages.
- Outage map: where failures are happening, from home and mobile connections in dozens of countries.
- Uptime and SLA calculator: what 99.9% means in minutes per month.
- What is my IP: your public address and network, never stored.
- How checks work: every rule behind "up", "problems" and "down".