Method

How we assess it

The whole method fits on one page, which is the point. If you cannot check our reasoning, our answer is worth nothing to you.

The five levels

1. 1 NormalThe internet is working the way it usually works. Ordinary faults are happening somewhere, as they always are, and almost nobody notices them. Current
2. 2 UnsettledOne large service or one region is degraded. If you are not using that service, your day looks normal.
3. 3 DisruptedA service that millions of people depend on is down, or a whole country has lost a big piece of its connectivity. It is in the news.
4. 4 SevereMore than one of the systems everything else sits on is in trouble at the same time, and the problems are feeding each other.
5. 5 On fireThe honest top of the scale. It has never been used.

What we look at

We watch the layers that everything else depends on, because those are the only failures big enough to deserve the word "fire". A single website going down is not one of them, however large that website is to the people who use it.

• Name resolution, routing, and the certificate system, which are the plumbing nothing works without.
• The small number of cloud and content delivery providers that most of the web quietly runs on.
• Physical capacity between continents, where a few cable faults at once can take a region offline.
• The consumer platforms where a problem gets noticed by a billion people in about four minutes.

Then we ask the only question that matters for the number on the front page: can an ordinary person go about an ordinary day online. Usually they can.

What we do not do

We do not monitor your network, your website, or your company. We do not sell protection, insurance, consulting, or a premium tier of this page. We do not raise the level because a popular app is having a slow morning, and we do not raise it because something frightening was posted about the internet on the internet.

We also do not run an automated monitor. A person reads the sources and decides. That is slower than a script and it is harder to fool.

Who changes the level

A person, by hand, after reading more than one independent source. When the level changes, the date it changed goes on the status page and stays there. We would rather be twenty minutes late than wrong in public.

When we are wrong

This page is maintained by people and it can be out of date, mistaken, or unreachable. If your own service is broken, the status page of whoever provides it will know before we do, and you should trust them over us. We publish a general picture for the public, and a general picture is a poor substitute for the specific one you need when something you depend on stops working.