Recognizing and Curing Internet Connectivity Issues

    Nowadays, for most of you, it’ll be very much hard to stay offline or at least without an internet connection. The influence of Internet and its services are that much intensive on our everyday life. We use those services for purposes ranging from sending an email to controlling web servers situated Kilometers from our current place. But what if you’re getting frustrated with Internet Connection problems? Obviously those problems are intolerable since the extensive influence of Internet in our life. In some situations, the simultaneous hit at F5 could help you to recover your desired website or webpage.

 But what if F5 doesn’t help? What you can do on those situations is recognizing what actual problem and its cause are and taking suitable actions for overcoming the problem. So, let’s discuss some of the major Internet Connectivity problems and how could we avoid those, and hence get seamless Web based services. These problems include both Hardware and Software problems so the problem may be your Router/Modem’s loose contact too!

Ping the Website

First thing you’ve to do when you think there’s a problem for my Internet connection is using the Ping feature in Microsoft Windows. You can use this feature through Windows Command Prompt (Start Menu à Type ‘cmd’ or search Command Prompt). If you can’t get websites even though you’re connected, run a command ‘ping URL’ (e.g. ‘ping google.com’ or ‘ping homeforgeeks.com’). By hitting the Enter button, your PC sends a number of Data Packets to the server of corresponding website and as usually, the web server replies for each Packet that receives. You can see a list like shown in the below figure which includes Data information such as Packet Loss.

 In the given figure, the Packet Loss is shown to be 0% which means your Internet is working fine and there’s not much time for receiving each Data Packets. But if the Web Server isn’t responding to the sent Data Packets and there’s a Packet Loss, it indicates a Network Problem of Internet Connection. If the time taken for replying to the packets is comparatively high, that also means, your Internet connection needs a Technical Checkup. Either problem will be of single website or ISP/Router/Modem (If you’re facing this Packet Loss for several websites). Even if your connection is well, some websites won’t reply you for those packets. Microsoft.com is such one.

One Website, One Problem

     Sometimes, you’ll be facing problem for loading a specific website only (I used to because I’m using a very slow connection). If majority of other websites are working fine, the phenomenon may confuse you to recognize what the problem is. There is an awesome tool Down for Everyone or Just for Me which will tell you whether the website is down for all users or just for you. If the site says that one website is down only for you, you could search for a major problem which deals with the path between server and the network you’re using. For understanding this problem you can use Traceroute command (tracert Facebook.com) by which you could distinguish the path taken by Data Packets sent from servers.

DNS? Yeah it also makes problems

 It’s very much interesting if you’re having a look ‘how you connect to a website (say google.com)’. When you hit enter after typing the URL, your PC requests the DNS Server to find google.com’s IP address and lead your PC to that address. Your connection uses the default DNS Server given by the provider and it can also make some problems.

 First thing you can do is not using the DNS Server and accessing the Website using its IP Address. For example you can type http://74.125.224.72 for accessing your favorite google.com. Actually it’s also a way for accessing Google if it is blocked on your college/company but only works if the webmaster has not blocked the IP Address.

The problem may be nothing listed above but really related to your Modem/Router/ISP. So just have a look on these things before jumping into the world of DNS and IP Addresses. Anyhow, hope those tips will help you to get a seamless Internet Connection. Do you use any other tips/services for recognizing and curing your Internet Connectivity Problems? Share it through comments.