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The Internet is a joint effort, no one person owns it, controls or runs it and no one person or company can fix it, you must rely on others, many others.

Question: My website is not working, why?  Why can I see other websites but not mine?
Short Answer: 99.9% of the time your website is working, however you may not be able to connect to it from where you are located.  This is most likely due to one of the following; Your ISP (the service provider you use to connect to the internet), a back bone provider , a router or switch.  

Complete Answer: 
Your website is on a computer called a web server.  Your server is very reliable since it does not run software like windows that often causes system errors. Your web server is a UNIX platform the runs "Apache Stronghold" the fastest, most reliable, most preferred and most used server software available. Unix and Apache have been around for many many years, so they have been tuned to perfection by thousands of user inputs.
Your connection may be broken by many factors. Although your website is running fine at it's location if you cannot get to it's location you will not see your website.

Possible problems include:
Your computer or your network: Not likely if you are seeing other websites ok, unless you have recently transfer you website to a new web host. If this is the case it is very like the problem is DNS and you can only wait for propagation. It will take about 2 days for your websites transfer or new website address to propagate world wide. All Internet providers must update their records (DNS tables) to reflect new site locations. This is called propagation and is dependant on Internet Service Providers around the world, including your local provider. If you have a new website nothing will work including email until propagation is complete.
If you are transferring an existing website during this time you may see your old website sometimes and your new website sometimes, this depends on the route your signal takes to your webdite. E-MAIL may also come from your old website or your new website during this time. If your new email login works at one time and not the next it's because the signal is trying to log into your old account due to DNS. This will all resolve itself as DNS propagates.

Your Local Service provider: Depending on where the problem is your signal could be making it to some websites and not others, depending on where the websites server that you are trying to get to is physically located. Here some maps that will give you an idea of the routes of some major carriers. Keep in mind these maps do not even take into account the route to your doorstep.

How to fix it: (try this) You yourself probably cannot fix the connection problem, since you are relying on others, like MCI, Sprint, ATT, UUnet, Time Warner, Road Runner, etc..etc.. You must wait for them to fix the problem. Your first step is to wait 5-30 minutes, if it's not fixed by then you may want to start investigating the problem. Can you connect to other websites? if not have you changed anything on your PC? Is your PC phone line or cable connected, is your phone or cable working, can you access other websites - yes?

The good news is your web sever as well as most other hardware and software used in this process have monitors installed.  If your web server has a system problem a onsite system administrator is instantly paged with the server number. Similar systems are monitoring many of the connection and routing processed that make the Internet work.  So if you notice a connection problem, you can bet someone is already working on a fix.  Although most problems are fixed within a few minutes, some can go on for hours and in rare cases a few days. Your web server with Insitwebdesign.com is monitor 24x7x365 with a system admin always ready to apply a fix should a problem occur. 

How the internet works (with pictures) from your computer to the world! Click Here 

How DNS works Click Here.

Internet Glossary of terms: Click here

Current Internet Condition is: Click here

How to run a trace route: Click here

Webserver:
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A Web server is a special computer that serves files that form Web pages. Every computer on the Internet that contains a web site must have a web server.
I can access other websites but not mine?
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 Perhaps the most frustrating of all problems however it's really quite simple. Your web server is located in a data center that is in California, Florida or New York. The other websites you are accessing are probably not on a web server in the same area.  It's hard for you to detect where a websites server is physically located. So while you may not be able to access any websites in central Florida due to a broken line or router there or else where, the only site you really know is not accessible is yours. If you knew of another website server that was located in the same general area as yours, chances are you would not be able to access it either.
Does this mean no one can see my website? Absolutely not, in fact even through you cannot get to your website, chances are most people on the Internet can access it. In fact, say your next door neighbor is using a different Internet Service Provider (ISP) than you, they may be able to access your website while you cannot.  This is because different service providers use different backbone providers so your neighbors signal may be taking a different route than yours.  While this is not always the case,  many times it is.  If you live in a small town or remote area, many different ISPs may use the same routes, but in cities and large rural area there may be many different route available.

 

TIP:  Next time you cannot access your website try this:
1. Go to http://anonymiser.com/ and type your website address in the field where it says "Try it Free".  Make sure you typed your address in correctly and click the "GO" button.  It will take awhile (about 1-2 minutes) but if your website shows up it means your ISP or one of there backbone providers is having a problem (probably near your local area).  The http://anonymiser.com/ sends your signal around a different route than it would normally take. Of course if your connection is broken before your ISP or Anonymiser happens to use the same route this won't help.

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