![man women using laptops outside](https://gamesettech.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/eliott-reyna-man-woman-laptops-outside-unsplash.jpg)
While sitting eating breakfast at a local café, a group of four bike riders sat next to us. They ordered coffee and shared biscuits. One of the members of the club asked the others, “How is your internet?”
All four talked about their grey spots. Then one of them mentioned the difficulties they were having with their mobile phone plans and internet connections.
Did you know that you can check your internet connection a couple of ways?
Down Detector
You can check the DownDetector website. It promises “real-time problem and outage monitoring. We tell you when your favourite services are down or having problems.”
For example, I can see coloured graphs for Telstra, Gmail, National Broadband Network (NBN), Vodafone, Optus, Roblox, St. George Bank, Twitter, ANZ Australia Bank, Instagram, PayPal, Commonwealth Bank, Microsoft 365, Foxtel, TPG Telecom, Facebook, Bank of Melbourne, YouTube, Dodo, Exetel, Amazon, Australia Post, Spotify, iiNet, Westpac, Belong, Google Meet, National Australia Bank (NAB), Uber Eats, YouTube Music, MyGov, Call of Duty, MYOB, Amazon Prime Video, Bank SA, Discord, Netflix, Google, Microsoft Teams, Reddit, Madden (EA Sports / NFL), Tesla, Hulu, Crunchyroll, Canva, Ticketmaster, EA, Snapchat.
There is a search bar where you can enter “Which service are you having problems with?” and then press the 🔍 red search tool button.
Speed Test
You can use the Speed Test website to check how fast is your internet speed. It can be used on different devices. You can measure your connection speed for your nbn™, ADSL, Cable or mobile data service with the speed test.
My speed test results were 53.78 Mbps download with 18.86 Mbps upload.
Issues with Internet Connections
When my internet connection is down, I’ll receive a text message from our NBN provider. The communication is good. Recently, it was down, and these were the messages I received:
- NBN Planned maintenance in your area email notifications.
- NBN outage in your area.
- NBN service is back online.
It’s difficult to provide an estimated time to fix network issues. Planned maintenance is scheduled for unsociable hours to ensure minimal impact on neighbours and workplaces. For example, traffic lights are often upgraded around midnight to ensure that only a few roads are affected.
In Australia, the NBN is centrally managed and then provided to wholesalers.
When the NBN is down it may be due to a number of reasons:
- Internet congestion – too much demand for the network.
- Significant cyber security incident. Viruses and malware may also be to blame.
- Malicious or accidental cutting of the optic fibre network.
- General maintenance and upgrading of the optic fibre network, including replacing copper wires with optic fibres.
- Construction, building or roadwork in the neighbourhood.
About Speedtest by Okla
Speedtest® by Ookla® is the definitive way to test the speed and performance of your internet connection. Every day, over ten million unique tests are actively initiated by our users in the locations and at the times when their connectivity matters to them. Since our founding in 2006, an unparalleled total of more than 50 billion tests have been taken with Speedtest.