As people conduct more of their personal and professional lives from home, their internet is taking more and more of the strain, with vast amounts of data flowing out of and into our houses every day.
And that is mostly fine, so long as those connections work. While they have mostly withstood the brunt of the changes to the way people use the internet, they do occasionally struggle – and, when they do, it can be confusing and difficult.
That’s why it can be helpful to answer the immediate and obvious question: is there really something wrong with the internet, or is it just you? And that can usually be found out relatively quickly.
Sky’s latest outages are a reminder that our reliance on the internet can make things exciting but also very difficult if it is unable to cope with that load. Here’s what to do if you, too, are a Sky customer and find that your internet is not working properly.
If your internet goes down, the most obvious and annoying trick is usually the first one to try: turn it off and on again. That applies in the first case to your router, but restarting whatever device you are using to access the internet might help too.
If that doesn’t work, then it is possible that you are being hit by an outage outside of your home rather than within it. But it is good to know for sure.
The first place to go is Sky’s own service checker, which you can find here. It might not be the fastest place to find out, but it is the most authoritative, and will give you information straight from Sky.
Its checks don’t necessarily need to be done from your home internet connection, so if that is unstable – and it presumably is – you can access that link through your phone. You’ll need to log in, though, so have your Sky ID details to hand.
That page should be able to tell you not only whether there is an outage but where it is, and how long it has been going on for. You might also get some information about when it might be fixed – or at least the assurance that Sky is aware of and working on it.
If that is inconslusive, however, the second place to head to is a tracking website like Down Detector. That relies on user reports to judge whether a service might be down; it can be wrong, but it’s also faster to respond than the official page.
Down Detector takes much of its reports from Twitter, and that’s another good place to check. You can have a search for other people looking for problems but the quickest place to head is probably Sky’s own account – there, updates will be shared on any big outages, and you can also ask any questions about the ongoing problems.
By now, you should know whether the internet is really down, though if it is Sky’s problem there probably isn’t very much you can do. Such internet problems tend to be relatively short-lasting, and you can try other tricks such as using a public WiFi connection so long as it is safe, or tethering from your phone as long as you have the data to do so.
