We take all complaints about usability and performance seriously. We work on our CMS all day long, just like you, and we understand how frustrating it can be when things are slow or don't load at all. That's why we spend a lot of money making sure our servers are operating at their best, and that our network providers are providing fast service.

However, what people often forget is that there are many independent networks between your computer and our servers, and these often get overloaded or experience technical difficulties. Fortunately, your traffic will find a way around this congestion by other paths, but this often slows things down. 99.9% of the time the slowness you experience is a result of your local ISP (Internet Service Provider) or one of these independent networks between you and our server. It's extremely frustrating because people assume it's a problem with our server, but we have no control over it.

Remember, the network problems can affect traffic to only some servers. Your internet connection may be fast in general, and you may still be able to access other websites without a problem.

If you want definitive proof of where the problem exists, there are some easy steps to take. Then you will be able to know who to complain to, either us or your ISP. Even if it's not your ISP's fault or a problem with our server, hopefully, one of us can put pressure on our upstream providers so they can put pressure on their upstream providers to do something about it. We wish it were simpler, sorry.

Simple Checks

1. Check if you can access any other website, e.g. http://news.google.com 
   
   • If you cannot, then there is something wrong with your local internet connection.
   • If you can, then your internet connection is fine, but there may be something wrong with the network between you and our server (usually a problem with your ISP or one of their upstream providers). This does happen frequently, when major infrastructure and routers go bad, etc.
2. Check if you can access a website located in the same part of the country as our servers, e.g. http://www.modwest.com 
   
   • If you can, then the network is not a problem and there could be something wrong with our server.
   • If you cannot, then our server is probably fine, but the network has problems. Just wait. The problem is bigger than you or us, and will resolve itself shortly.
3. Check if you can access Gutensite: http://www.gutensite.com
   
   • If you are reading this then yes you can access gutensite.com.
   • If you can, but you can't access your own site, you may have a problem with your own domain. Did it expire recently? Is it still pointing to our DNS Servers or somewhere else? What is the error that you are getting?
   • The error you are receiving will give you a good hint about what the problem is, read it carefully, and if you think you need more help, follow the steps below to get some diagnostic information for us to help you.

3 Steps To Identifying The Problem

1. TRACE YOUR TRAFFIC'S ROUTE

Network-Tools.com is a great website that lets you run diagnostics on your network. Run a "Trace" to our server "www.gutensite.com". This will provide you with some diagnostic information which you should copy and paste into an email to us, it will look like the following code. If you see asterisks in the traceroute, that means there is a problem. If they are closer to the top, that means you should provide this information to your ISP because the problem is closer to you. If they are closer to the last server (crate.modwest.com) then the problem is closer to our Network Providers.

TraceRoute to 204.11.244.154 [gutensite.com]

Hop	(ms)	(ms)	(ms)	IP Address	Host name

1	19	27	7	72.249.134.177	-

2	9	9	6	8.9.232.73	xe-5-3-0.edge3.dallas1.level3.net

* * * *

3	8	17	17	4.69.145.243	ae-92-90.ebr2.dallas1.level3.net

4	29	21	32	4.69.132.105	ae-2.ebr1.denver1.level3.net

5	28	21	32	4.69.132.38	ae-1-100.ebr2.denver1.level3.net

6	72	49	52	4.69.132.53	ae-2.ebr2.seattle1.level3.net

7	50	48	48	4.68.105.39	ge-11-0.hsa2.seattle1.level3.net

8	49	62	48	63.211.200.30	network-inn.hsa2.seattle1.level3.net

9	61	60	61	209.200.200.41	ge-0-1-0-17-1q-fh.core.ip.transaria.net

10	62	62	61	209.137.237.142	modwest-edge-msl.mt.cust.cutcom.net

11	62	61	63	204.11.244.154	crate.modwest.com

Trace complete

2. GET YOUR IP ADDRESS

Go to www.whatismyip.org to learn what your IP address is, then copy and paste it into an email to us. With this information, we can run diagnostic tools to trace traffic from our server to your computer to see where there may be reverse congestion. Your IP address will consist of 4 sets of numbers separated by periods, e.g. "11.2.333.44"

3. SEND AN EMAIL WITH THIS INFORMATION

Once you have gathered this information, and if it looks like the problem is closer to our server, send an email to our support staff so that we can investigate. Also, include any screenshots or copy and paste of errors that you received, so we can know exactly what isn't working.