If you have no Internet access a series of troubleshooting steps will help to determine where the breakdown is and how to resolve the problem.

When your Internet service is disrupted, there can be many things that have gone wrong. The best way to start is to determine if everything is broken (i.e. you can't access any websites or Internet services) or if the difficulty is only with a certain program or a specific website not responding.

If Access is Limited

If you are able to view certain sites, but not others, it is possible that one or more specific sites are down:

• Go to Is It Up? and enter the domain of the site you're looking for. Is It Up will check to see if they can connect. If they can and you can't, the issue is either with you or your ISP's connection.
• Sites go dead for a variety of reasons and the issue may be temporary.
• If you see a 404 error (“page not found”), it means that the site is up but the page you requested is not available.

If you are able to view local content but cannot see sites hosted across the country or elsewhere, there could be a blockage in the Internet grid.

• Have a look at The Internet Traffic Report which monitors the flow of data around the world. You can view data for specific cities, helping to pinpoint potential problems.
• These are issues with the Internet itself and there is little you can do but wait it out.

If only some of your programs are working, try the following:

• If your email works fine but your problem appears to be related only to your web browser, have a look at Browser Problems.
• If you can surf the Web okay, but you have difficulty sending or receiving email, have a look at Email Problems.

Check to See if the Problem is the Computer

If you have more than one computer, see if both computers are experiencing difficulties accessing the Internet. If the second computer has full access then your problem is localized to the first computer (you can skip any tests that don't deal with the computer itself).

Reboot the Computer

Try rebooting your computer to see if that fixes the problem. You'd be surprised how often that simple step resolves issues.

If restarting your computer or device doesn't work, you'll have to verify each potential problem to verify that it is or isn't the problem until you restore access.