Is it my internet, or the website?

A failed page load could have broken at any of six layers: Your device, your Wi-Fi, your router, your ISP, DNS, or the website. The browser shows you the same thing regardless.

The efficient approach is not to check them in physical order but in order of how much each test rules out. Done properly this takes about ninety seconds and usually finishes at step two.

Test 1: Is it one site or everything? (10 seconds)

Open three unrelated sites - Different companies, different hosting, different countries if you can manage it.

All three work. Your internet is fine and one site is the problem. Skip to the end.

All three fail. Something between you and the internet at large. Continue.

Some work, some do not. The most interesting result. Your connection is fine, and a shared layer is having trouble - A CDN, a cloud region, or a DNS resolver returning answers for some names and not others. This pattern has its own article; briefly, look at the error pages, because if several sites show the same third party's branded error you have found the layer.

Test 2: Does an IP address work? (10 seconds)

Type https://1.1.1.1 into the address bar. That is a numeric address; no name resolution is involved.

A page loads. Your connection is completely fine and DNS is the problem. This is by far the most common cause of "the internet is down" and the fix takes a minute. Go to the DNS guide.

It does not load. Genuine connectivity failure. Continue.

Test 3: Does another device work? (20 seconds)

Try the same site on a phone or another computer on the same Wi-Fi.

The other device works. The problem is your first device: Its network configuration, a VPN client, a firewall, a proxy setting, or the browser. Browser-level causes are worth checking before anything drastic.

Both fail. The problem is the network, not the device. Continue.

Test 4: Does mobile data work? (20 seconds)

On a phone, turn Wi-Fi off and use cellular. This replaces your router, your ISP and your DNS resolver in one action, which is why it is such a good test.

Mobile data works. Your home network or your ISP. The next question is which - See below.

Mobile data fails the same way. The problem is beyond both networks: The site itself, or something between you and it that both paths share. Confirm with a check from our servers and stop troubleshooting locally.

Test 5: Router or ISP? (1 minute)

You have narrowed it to your own connection. The router's status lights tell you which side of the router the problem is on.

• No internet or WAN light. The line itself. Cable modems show a blinking or orange light when they cannot lock onto a downstream channel; DSL shows no sync; fibre shows a red LOS light when the optical signal is gone.
• Internet light on, nothing works. The line is fine and something inside is not - DHCP, routing, or the ISP's DNS.
• No Wi-Fi light. The radio, not the line. A wired connection will work.

If the line is down, check your provider's outage checker with your address, and check whether other people in your area are reporting problems. ISP faults cluster tightly by geography - Cable providers in particular fail at node level, which means the next street can be completely unaffected.

Only now is restarting the router worth doing, and do it properly: Power off for a full thirty seconds so any capacitors discharge and the ISP's session times out cleanly. A two-second power cycle often reconnects the same broken session.

Reading the result

Two things worth knowing

Intermittent is different. A connection that works and then does not, repeatedly, is usually a physical or capacity problem rather than a configuration one - A marginal cable, Wi-Fi interference, or evening congestion on a shared line. Configuration problems are consistent; physical ones are not.

Slow is not down. A connection that is up but very slow has a different set of causes: Contention on a shared medium, a device saturating the link, or throttling. Running a speed test at different times of day usually distinguishes congestion from a fault, because congestion has a shape and a fault does not.