Is your server down ?

Quite possibly the most common call you'll get if you're a phone firewall at an ISP is

"Is your server down ?"

This gets asked by the lusers no matter what is wrong - 99% of the time they've done something wrong. Like not plugging the modem into the phone socket or trying to connect during a power outage (yes, both of those have occured with the luser blaming the ISP).

The following are some other variations:

Joe Thompson wrote:

• "My Internet is down!"
• "Your Internet is down!"
• "The server is down!"

And the classic:

• "The Internet is down!!"

Anthony DeBoer then pointed out that the correct response to the last one is:

"Hmmm, they designed it to survive everything up to and including nuclear war, but they were never able to test that last bit. Maybe there are still a few seconds left to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye."

or the variation

"Hmmm, they designed it to survive everything up to and including nuclear war, but they were never able to test OH FSCK <slam phone down>."

Date posted: 12th March 2000