Check on the Internet's Health
I miss the days when I could yell down the hall and check to see if my "Internet problem" was everyone elses' problem, too. Now that I work from home, I have to do a lot more checking to see if the problem is my computer, my network, or some bigger issue that I have little control over. To troubleshoot these problems, I have my own set of steps that I walk through, but I haven't had a good way to check the Internet's overall health.
However, last week, thanks to Andy Carvin, I found a new tool to do just that: Internet Health Report. Using this site, you can monitor the availability and latency of the major Tier One carriers. Granted, it's not going to help if you can't connect to the Internet at all, but it will give you a better idea of whether your network is just being pokey or if the Internet is slow in general. - K
