Help I can't reach my site
If you can't reach your site, please fill out the contact us form on our website. Also, please read the important information below concerning downtime and slow connections.
Downtime Explained
There may be times when you will not be able to view your site in a web browser. Your site will appear to be down. To most of our customers, this automatically makes them think that our network or our servers are down. However, this is rarely the cause of this problem.
Our servers have an average uptime of over 99.9% each month. That means, in a month that contains 720 hours, our servers will be down less than 45 minutes. In a 12 month cycle, each of our servers averages 10 months of 100% uptime.
Why do I sometimes get an error when attempting to view my site?
Though it is common for our customers to believe this type of problem resides in our network, it is possible that the problem could be somewhere else within your connection or even your computer. Each time you dial up to the Internet, you are dialing up through a network computer (Your ISP). When you type in a web address in your browser, this network computer then chooses the 'path' that your request will travel to reach its destination. If it chooses a path that is congested, then you may have trouble viewing your site, even if our servers and network are operating fine.
Sometimes, your network dialup provider may be having problems, and sometimes, there may be a problem in a transit server ( a server that receives your request and passes it down the line until it reaches the destination server), and sometimes, it may be our network that has the problem.
I can see other sites but not mine
There may be times when you can see some sites, but not get to yours, even though our network is operating and the servers are up. Think of your Internet connection as a series of highways and think of typing in your web site address as a journey from work to your home and visiting another site as work to the grocery store. If you travel down one highway to get to home, You may have no problems at all and your journey may be swift. However, if you take a different highway to get from work to the grocery store, you may find yourself in bumper to bumper traffic and your journey may take 2-3 times as long. That's how a typical Internet connection is. Your connection depends on which 'route' your ISP sends your request. If they send you down a congested path, then you may find your site appears down, though it is operating fine.
I have a DSL connection, so this doesn't effect me?
Wrong! Regardless of the speed of your dial up connection, your web request travels down the same Internet paths as everyone else. You will have a simelar number of transit servers in your connection to your web site and you will be dependent on each of them to make a good connection.
Is CWS ever responsible for a slow connection?
Of course. There are times when our network or our severs experience difficulty. When this happens, we work quickly to resolve the problem. However, if you are experiencing trouble, then please contact us so we can help you determine where the problem is.
Is there anything I can do to help a bad connection?
The second thing to try is to close your dial up connection and then reopen a new dial up connection, If you were on a dial up server that was having a problem or connected through a modem at your ISP that was having problem, then this may correct it.