I notice from time to time, occasions where the site appears down for hours at a time.

For example, it was down the entire morning today.

Is this a known issue? I never see any posts about it.

It's several issues and unfortunately I do not have control over it at the moment. From ISPs who don't care about their customers to modem manufacturers that put s*** products on the market, it's the best of a bad lot.

Some months ago I made a device that has an isolating contactor and a GSM link. When I discover the site is down I can reboot the modem with that device and it puts everything right. At the moment there's no sensor I can implement to tell me when the connection is lost. Well, there is, but none do that job the way I want it done.

I may be shifting house soon. If that happens there's an opportunity to change ISP and improve the connection uptime. The server itself is going fine though, which is good news.

Sometimes members send me an e-mail to let me know what's going on and that is a good thing, however my mail server uses the same connection, so I don't get the message until I've reset the connection.

Sometimes members send me an e-mail to let me know what's going on and that is a good thing, however my mail server uses the same connection, so I don't get the message until I've reset the connection

If you have an alternative email address, let me know offline and I'll use that for such reports.

At the moment there's no sensor I can implement to tell me when the connection is lost. Well, there is, but none do that job the way I want it done.

Pingability will, free of charge, ping the site every hour and email you (naturally to a non-associated email address) if it's not responding. Anything more frequent that 750 pings a month incurs a charge.

https://pingability.com/planpricing.jsp

I have never found this site down? At the moment I'm only using my phone to visit this site because my computer is down, but I can always access this site ,,,it maybe your server,or area, I'm in Sydney , typing on the phone is the hard part for me.

It all comes down to luck I think. At times, probably due to a crook phone line, or as mentioned before a crap modem, the connection does drop out. It seems to have started after TPG rolled out fibre in the area. I have not upgraded because they do not offer the required static IP addresses on their fibre connections. The dropouts only happen once every few weeks so one had to be pretty much a daily visitor to notice.

Sometimes members send me an e-mail to let me know what's going on and that is a good thing, however my mail server uses the same connection, so I don't get the message until I've reset the connection.

As I just found out... (I blanked out your email address)

"Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

Subject: Site timing out
Sent: 29/06/2016 16:33

The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:

*****************************' on 29/06/2016 16:34
Server error: '452 4.1.1 ... temporary failure'

Yours did eventually arrive. Mail servers usually try about ten times to send any queued mail and these attempts usually go over two or three days. After that a separate message is sent to the sender with words to the effect of "Sorry, I did try but now I give up".

Today the connection did drop though was discovered a lot quicker. Closer to 30 minutes instead of the 8 hours the other day.

Down today?

Yes it was down most of the day. I sent an email anyway.

I sent an email anyway

As Brad has mentioned, his email server (and thus address) is on the same computer that hosts the website, so he has no access to that email address when the computer (or modem) is playing dead.

Yes, it is still a gremlin in the Internet connection and I'm not in a position to replace it until early next year and the ISP seems unwilling to assist as they believe nothing is wrong - fairly typical response from all ISPs really. The good news is that the servers are in prime condition and there's no risk to the site or the database.

I am hoping to be in a position to connect to fibre in the new year and if I can pull that off it will be good for everyone.