DNS Archives - Tech Hacks

How to check if a Website is actually down?

There are many reasons why a website might not open in your browser. They include:

The website being down
Your DNS not being able to lookup the IP address of the website
Settings in your browser blocking access to the website
Routers/Proxy servers redirecting traffic

The possiblity of error might seem to be larger on your side but its deeply frustrating to check every cause and eventually figure out that the problem was actually on the website’s side.Â The simplest way to eliminate this possibility is to check the website through http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

Fire up your browser and point it to http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

Once there type the website to check, in the space provided and hit enter.

If the website is down you will get something like the following message:

Other wise you will get a message like this one:

In case of the latter, maybe its time to choose a better DNS provider or recheck your browser/router settings

The Best DNS for you

Having a quick Domain Name Server is very important for that lightning quick internet experience. Fortunately there are ways for you to easily figure out which DNS works best for you.

Namebench as described at its website:

It hunts down the fastest DNS servers available for your computer to use. namebench runs a fair and thorough benchmark using your web browser history, tcpdump output, or standardized datasets in order to provide an individualized recommendation. namebench is completely free and does not modify your system in any way.

All you need to do is download the program and run it. After a few minutes of churning out calculations the program will tell you the best DNS settings for your system.