If you discover that the server is in the middle of a range of 10 to 20 IP
addresses that are all broken, then it could well indicate a wider networking
issue deep within the air-conditioned, fireproof bunker that your server calls
home. It is unlikely that the hosting company would leave so many IP
addresses unused or that the addresses would have all crashed at the same
time for different reasons. It is likely, though not definitive, that a whole
rack or room has been disconnected or lost power... or burned down.
Alternatively, if nearby IP addresses do reply, then only your server is down.
You can proceed to the next step anyway and hope that the cause is that
your server is very secure and is blocking ping requests. Perhaps upgrade
that deep frown to a pronounced grimace.
Otherwise, you’ll have to keep listening to Foreigner until your hosting
company answers the phone. It is the only one that can fix the network
and/or restart the server. But at least you now have someone else to blame.
And if you are number 126 in the queue, it’s probably because 125 other
companies think their websites have suddenly gone down, too.
4. Check Your Web Server Software
If the server is alive but just not serving up websites, then you can make
one more check before logging onto the server. Just as your office
computer has a lot of software for performing various tasks (Photoshop,
Firefox, Mac Mail, Microsoft Excel, etc.), so does your server. Arguably its
most important bit of software is the Web server, which is usually Apache
on Linux servers and IIS on Windows servers. (From here on in, I will refer to
it as “Web server software,” because “Web server” is sometimes used to
refer — confusingly — to the entire server.)