How To Spot A Psychopath

May 21, 2008

UsefulsiteIdidn'tknowabout.com

Filed under: Shop talk

I just discovered downforeveryoneorjustme.com, which does what it says on the tin.

Until now, I tested sites for down-ness by feeding their URL to a translator of some kind, thereby making the translator’s server try to load the site. But downforeveryoneorjustme.com is much faster and more elegant.

It’ll also tell you if you’re checking the status of a nonexistent site. Oddly, though, it seems to believe that it itself is down.

(See also.)

11 Comments »

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  1. Too bad it doesn't work for IPv6 sites.
    IPv6 used to work for me under Vista, but not now.
    I'm suspecting the new modem/router (Netgear DG834G v2) or maybe Bigpond have changed what they support.
    (I wanted to test ipv6.google.com as a front-runner in the long-awaited IPv6 roll-out)

    Comment by UnderLord — May 21, 2008 @ 8:49 am

  2. Reading AskMe this morning?

    Comment by pompomtom — May 21, 2008 @ 11:16 am

  3. Heh. Ask it about itself now:

    If you can see this page and still think we're down, it's just you.

    Comment by Roca — May 21, 2008 @ 12:53 pm

  4. It would appear that their matching of their own address is actually case sensitive, as in my testing I found (through unintentional caps-locking) that, 'DOWNforeveryoneorjustme.com' returns down, but 'downforeveryoneorjustme.com' returns the result mentioned by Roca.

    Quite curious...

    Comment by shimavak — May 21, 2008 @ 9:26 pm

  5. It would appear that their matching of their own address is actually case sensitive, as in my testing I found (through unintentional caps-locking) that, 'DOWNforeveryoneorjustme.com' returns down, but 'downforeveryoneorjustme.com' returns the result mentioned by Roca.

    Quite curious...

    Comment by shimavak — May 21, 2008 @ 9:26 pm

  6. If you like instantrimshot, you'll like http://www.sadtrombone.com/

    Comment by jmguazzo — May 22, 2008 @ 4:22 am

  7. The problem causing it to fail to resolve its own address would be caused by the wonders of NAT. When the server tries to resolve its own address, it gets the public IP but can only connect to itself through the private IP. The case sensitive matching is just a poor attempt to make their own address a special case.(i'm guessing it will become case insensitive soon, much the same as it didnt work at all at first). They should really modify the server so it points to its own private address when resolving downforeveryoneorjustme.com

    Comment by crazyBassClown — May 22, 2008 @ 7:25 am

  8. Curious and curiouser...

    I just received an error message which would seem imply that this site is run by Google. A 502 server error with the Google logo in the correct colors but made of text.

    Additionally, the address resolves to 216.239.32.21, which is in the google subnet:

    CIDR: 216.239.32.0/19
    NetName: GOOGLE
    NetHandle: NET-216-239-32-0-1

    Most interesting, another feature like the google text messaging that just appears from the aether.

    Comment by shimavak — May 22, 2008 @ 11:04 pm

  9. The authors site is here

    Comment by tiersten — May 24, 2008 @ 10:57 pm

  10. And he works for Twitter so its not Google.

    Comment by tiersten — May 24, 2008 @ 10:59 pm

  11. I always use nwtools.com. It lets you check DNS, ping, trace and return HTML headers (which at least lets you know if the server is up and accessible). Very handy when you're hosting your own website and you want to know if it's working outside your LAN.

    Comment by BigMick77 — June 1, 2008 @ 12:18 am

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