Be Careful when assuming the Internet is Down
Over the years, I have received many calls from customers, saying that their Internet connection was down. While, this does happen, in a large number of cases, their Internet connection was up, however the site that they were going to was down.
The typical case is where someone has their home page in their web browser set to, say, their company web site. They open their web browser, and get a message that they can not connect. Then they call that with a support request that their Internet connection is down, when in reality it is their web server that is down. Maybe it has crashed, or maybe it is down for scheduled maintenance. In either case, their Internet connection is just fine, and they should be calling the people that run their web site.
Another related case, is the call that "I can not connect to … site". While there are rare cases where packets may not be getting routed correctly, or their firewall needs to be adjusted, this is almost always a case of the target web site being down.
So, the first thing to do is to determine if everything is down, or if it is just one site. Try going to a few other web sites. If you try two or three other sites you know to be reliable, and are not able to connect to any of them, then, indeed, your Internet connection is probably down.
If, however, you get other connections, the problem is with the one site. You can contact them, or wait for it to come back up. If it is a major site, then undoubtedly they are aware of the issue, and have their technicians working on it. A small store with an in-house server, however, may not be aware that they are down. In either case, contacting them is about all that you (or us for that matter) can do, as the rest is up to them.
Dave.