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Many times i/we heard from our ISP that their servers are down so i cannot use internet for some moments.

According to me this is a server.

So my question here is:

  1. Do they use computer servers to send and receive data?

    OR

  2. ISP use Routers to send and receive data?

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    or 3. Any combination of the above Sep 5, 2014 at 14:18
  • Its a little bit too broad to really answer in details however ISP's normally provide routers to the client which provides local internet access. ISP's can have traffic routed via a proxy which could be the 'server' they refer too or they could mean their DNS Servers are down if this is the case you can use alternative DNS Servers instead of theirs support.zen.co.uk/kb/Knowledgebase/Windows-7-Static-DNS-setup
    – CharlesH
    Sep 5, 2014 at 15:06
  • They say "our server is down" because it sounds meaningful to most people and it keeps them from having to say "Our lineman got drunk at lunch and cut the wrong cable." Sep 5, 2014 at 17:19

2 Answers 2

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Or 3. Their infrastructure requires some server resources to be available. If their DHCP server is down, your computer cannot register with their network. If their DNS server is down, you cannot resolve host names. If they use a HTTP proxy server, you cannot connect to external web sites when it's down. Etc.

However, any serious ISP would have managed their infrastructure so as to avoid Single Points of Failure. In other words, a properly planned network has a fallback in place for when an individual piece of equipment fails. If outages are a recurring problem, you may want to shop around for a competently managed ISP instead.

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They are using the more general of the two terms (server versus router) such that-

  • it's easier for the general audience to understand. You're likely not the only one complaining to the ISP at that particular moment.

  • it prompts less questions. Since 'everyone' knows what a server is, it shuts the conversation down faster. "Well what's a router?" and all the following questions get avoided in a sly, conversational manner.

Your ISP, no matter how small, has some form of a 'script' for support personnel to follow when services are interrupted. Constructing these are targeted towards getting the customer off the phone or finished with the email/chat exchange as quickly as possible, while attempting to leave the customer with the sense that they got their question answered. And since, as stated above, DNS servers are required to have the router's packets do any good, it's not always entirely inaccurate.

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