Is My Internet Working? How to Check & Monitor in Real Time

"Is my internet working?" is one of the most common tech questions — and one of the most frustrating to answer. Sometimes pages load slowly, video buffers, apps won't connect, or your device shows a WiFi signal but nothing actually loads. The ambiguity is the problem: you're not sure if it's your internet, the website, your device, or something in between.

This guide walks through the fastest ways to check right now, explains why some tests are more reliable than others, and shows you how to go beyond a one-time check to monitor your connection continuously — so you always know the answer before the problem hits.

Quick ways to check right now

The fastest test is also the simplest: try loading a site you know is reliably available, like google.com. If it loads instantly, your internet is likely working. If it times out or loads slowly, the problem could be your connection or could be a temporary server issue on their end — so try a second site like cloudflare.com or amazon.com. If both fail, your connection is the likely culprit.

Next, check whether the issue is specific to one device. If your phone loads pages fine but your laptop doesn't, the problem is local to that device — check WiFi settings, restart the network adapter, or try forgetting and rejoining the WiFi network. If every device in your home is affected, the issue is upstream from your router — either the router itself, the cable/DSL modem, or your ISP's line.

A commonly overlooked check: being connected to WiFi does not mean your internet is working. Your device can have a strong WiFi signal to the router while the router has no connection to the internet. Always verify by actually loading a page, not just checking the WiFi icon. If ethernet is available, plugging in directly and bypassing WiFi entirely is the fastest way to rule out wireless interference as the cause.

Why ping and DNS tests beat page loads

Loading a webpage involves a chain of operations: DNS resolution, TCP connection, TLS handshake, HTTP request, server processing, and data transfer. Any layer in that chain can be the bottleneck, and page load time conflates all of them. A slow page load could mean your connection is slow, the server is overloaded, or a CDN node is having issues — you can't tell which from a browser load time alone.

DNS-over-HTTPS testing cuts through that complexity. By sending a lightweight DNS query to a well-known, highly available resolver like Google's 8.8.8.8, you measure pure round-trip latency on your connection — no web server variability, no CDN caching effects, no TLS overhead. If DNS resolves in 20ms, your connection is healthy. If it takes 800ms or times out, your ISP's routing is the problem. This is exactly the approach Monitor My Connection uses: it queries Google DNS (with Cloudflare as fallback) every second to give you an accurate, per-second view of your connection's health.

How to monitor in real time

Checking once answers "is it working right now?" — but many connection problems are intermittent. The page loads fine when you test it, then drops again two minutes later. Real-time monitoring catches those patterns.

To monitor in real time with Monitor My Connection, open the app in a browser tab and click Start Monitoring. The status indicator immediately begins updating every second, showing green for connected (under 200ms), yellow for slow (200–1000ms), and red for disconnected. The latency number updates in real time alongside the indicator, so you can see not just whether you're connected but how healthy the connection is. As monitoring continues, the chart builds a visual history — a timeline of your connection quality that you can zoom into to investigate specific moments.

There's no software to install, no account to create, and all data is stored locally in your browser. You can leave the tab running in the background while you work, and it will quietly accumulate a connection history that tells you exactly when problems occurred and how long they lasted.

Common causes of intermittent connectivity

Intermittent connectivity — the kind where your internet works most of the time but randomly drops or slows — is particularly difficult to diagnose without monitoring data. The most common causes include:

DNS issues: If your ISP's DNS servers are unreliable, every web request has to wait for DNS resolution before anything else can happen. Switching to Google DNS (8.8.8.8) or Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1) in your router's settings often resolves this class of problem immediately.

WiFi interference: Microwave ovens, baby monitors, neighboring WiFi networks, and even Bluetooth devices can interfere with the 2.4 GHz band. If your drops correspond to specific times of day or disappear when you connect via ethernet, wireless interference is the likely cause.

ISP routing problems: Your connection to your ISP might be solid while a routing problem elsewhere in their network causes specific destinations to be unreachable or slow. This is particularly common with Starlink and satellite ISPs during periods of high beam demand.

Network congestion at peak hours: Many ISPs oversell bandwidth, and shared infrastructure like cable nodes gets saturated during peak evening hours (typically 7–10 PM). If your connection consistently degrades at the same time each day, this is the most likely explanation.

Faulty hardware: Aging modems, loose coaxial connections, and failing cable splitters all cause intermittent connectivity that is nearly impossible to diagnose without a monitoring baseline. If your chart shows random, unpatterned drops throughout the day, hardware is a strong candidate. To figure out whether the problem is inside your home network or at the ISP level, see our guide to diagnosing whether it's WiFi or your ISP.

From checking to monitoring

Checking answers the question "is it working now?" — but monitoring answers the more useful question: "how reliable is it over time?" A single successful page load tells you nothing about your connection's behavior over the last 24 hours. Monitoring builds the historical picture that turns vague frustration into documented evidence.

Leave Monitor My Connection running for a full 24 hours to capture peak and off-peak behavior. After 24 hours, you'll have a chart that shows exactly when your connection struggled, how long each event lasted, and how latency varied throughout the day. That data is the starting point for every productive conversation with your ISP, your building management, or your own network setup. For a complete guide to continuous monitoring and how to use the resulting data, see how to set up 24/7 monitoring.