Diagnosing Server Connection Problems
When your server isn’t connected to the network, you (and everyone else) won’t be able to see your websites. So, maintaining server connectivity is vital to the success of your website. This article will explore identifying connectivity problems and the first steps of diagnosing the problems.
Sometimes a server connection problem is very simple to diagnose and correct. For example, you may not be able to access your server or see your websites if your server’s firewall has accidentally blocked your local IP address. To test for this, use your smartphone to visit your site or ask a friend to visit your site. If your site or server is only down for you, follow our simple instructions on Unblocking Your IP Address to solve your problem.
If your server is down for everyone, you can use the commands ping and traceroute to make sure the problem is a networking problem. Then, if it is a networking problem, you have a ton of great information to share with our Support team to resolve your issue more quickly.
Pinging Your Domain
When you ping a domain, you send small packets of information to a server and wait to see how long it takes to get information back. We have a whole article devoted to using ping. Check it out and then try using ping to see if your server is sending and receiving information normally.
If your ping is successful, it means information is being sent and received normally to and from your server. So any problems are unlikely to be connectivity-related. You definitely have a network connectivity problem if you ping your server and receive this information:
Request timed out. Request timed out. Request timed out. Request timed out.
If your ping times out, the next step is to run a traceroute to see where you’re losing the packets of data.
Using Traceroute
A traceroute shows the route your data takes to get from your computer to your server. When you use the traceroute command, it sends a little packet of information (just like when you use ping). But this will list all the “hops” (different computers) your connection uses to move through the internet.
To run a traceroute, you use the traceroute command (tracert for Windows). Open the terminal window of your choice and type in:
traceroute mysite.com
If you are using a Windows computer, type in:
tracert mysite.com
Remember to replace “mysite.com” with your domain name. When you press Enter, you’ll start to see your data packet moving through the world.
This is the kind of output you should see:
$ traceroute liquidweb.com traceroute to liquidweb.com (67.43.15.214), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 10.123.123.123 (10.123.123.123) 0.951 ms 0.486 ms 0.554 ms 2 lw-dc3-core2-nexus.rtr.liquidweb.com (69.167.128.230) 1.250 ms 1.129 ms 1.104 ms 3 lw-dc3-infdist1-po6.rtr.liquidweb.com (69.167.128.101) 0.788 ms 0.695 ms 0.748 ms 4 67.43.15.214 (67.43.15.214) 1.290 ms 1.335 ms 1.226 ms
What does this output mean? The first line of the output shows where your path is ending up. In this case, liquidweb.com with the IP address 69.43.15.214. It also lists the maximum number of hops it would have tried (64) and the size of each information packet (52 bytes).
traceroute to liquidweb.com (67.43.15.214), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
After the first line of output, each following line is broken up into columns. The columns might be in a different order based on the terminal program you use, but every traceroute contains the same information. The first column in this example shows the hop number. You can see from this example that it took four hops to get from the local computer to liquidweb.com.
4 67.43.15.214 (67.43.15.214) 1.290 ms 1.335 ms 1.226 msThe second column shows the destination of the hop. Sometimes this is a server domain name (if there’s a DNS record) and sometimes it’s just an IP address.
3 lw-dc3-core2-nexus.rtr.liquidweb.com (69.167.128.230) 1.250 ms 1.129 ms 1.104 ms
The third column will show the IP address.
3 lw-dc3-core2-nexus.rtr.liquidweb.com (69.167.128.230) 1.250 ms 1.129 ms 1.104 msAfter the IP address, the next three columns show the length of the hop’s round trip. By default, traceroute sends three packets.
3 lw-dc3-core2-nexus.rtr.liquidweb.com (69.167.128.230) 1.250 ms 1.129 ms 1.104 ms
If your request times out before reaching the domain you want, that is probably a networking problem. That output would look like this:
$ traceroute liquidweb.com traceroute to liquidweb.com (67.43.15.214), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 10.123.123.123 (10.123.123.123) 0.951 ms 0.486 ms 0.554 ms 2 lw-dc3-core2-nexus.rtr.liquidweb.com (69.167.128.230) 1.250 ms 1.129 ms 1.104 ms 3 lw-dc3-infdist1-po6.rtr.liquidweb.com (69.167.128.101) 0.788 ms 0.695 ms 0.748 ms 4 * * * Request timed out 5 * * * Request timed out
If you get results that look like this, copy and paste all the output into a support request for our Support team. They will take a look at your server and make sure you have the connectivity you need.