Mum! The Internet's down! I'm bored! No one wants to hear that, and what's worse in business is if your internet is down, you're up shit creek. Most businesses stop. Losing Internet Sucks Now, you're going to have staff yelling at you, going, "Oh, I can't get into Xero. I can't do this. I can't access our cloud-based application." Out loud they're saying that. In their mind, they're going, "I can't jump on Facebook. I can't jump on YouTube. What am I going to do on my lunch break?" Either way, it's a loss of production for your business and a headache for your home life. How to Check Outages There's a website called AussieOutages.com and what it does is it lets you know if there's any services that are down in the area, or any services that are down online. So, if your kids jump onto Xbox Live or whatever it might be, you can jump on this website and it will tell you if Netflix in the area or down globally or whatever the catchment area is of how far that spread goes. It also shows you different providers. So maybe Telstra's down or maybe Optus is down or whatever the go is. You can click on it, and got to your area and you can see a map and see if maybe it's just you and no one else is having this probably, or maybe there's a huge spike in the amount of people that are reporting issues with that telco. It's a really, really handy website to be able to work out what's going on and make sure that you didn't just have too many winos the night before that resulted in maybe you kicking the cord out of the router or unplugging something by accident. It gives you a bit more insight before you jump on the blower and drop some dosh on an IT guy or some other service that you might have to pay for to bring it up and running. You don't want to be on the phone talking to those people on hold for a long time and finding out that it's just your cord and you feel like an idiot. So instead, go to that website and you'll at least know if it's your internet connection or if it's a bigger fault that you probably can't do anything about. Still good to report it obviously. Use Your Phone to Check You might be wondering, "But Josh, my internet is down. How do I go to the website?" Very good question. I'm glad you asked. And the answer to that is hopefully if your mobile phone's down, you still have an internet connection that you can choose at home, your landline, or your partner's phone. Or if your landline internet connection, your NVN or ADSL service is down, hopefully, you can jump on your phone. And if not, think outside the box. Take a 50/50, phone a friend, and see what they say when they go to the website and look up your area. The Final Word Jumping into storm season around southeast Queensland. We're going to be getting more and more. So, this is an invaluable tool for you guys to jump on and check out. Stay good! To learn more about the internet , go to our blog https://dorksdelivered.com.au/blog/it-solutions/ or subscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/DorksDelivered/.