Stack Overflow appears to be down

Is Stack Overflow down for everyone or just me?

That is the only question worth answering when a site stops loading, and it has a simple test: check it from a machine that shares none of your network. This page does exactly that — the request comes from our server in London, using its own DNS resolver and its own route to the internet. If stackoverflow.com answers us, it is up, and whatever is stopping you sits between your device and the wider network.

Local causes are more common than real outages. A stale DNS entry, a router that needs a restart, an ISP resolver holding a bad record, a VPN exit node the service blocks, an ad-blocker rule, or simply a cached error page in your browser: each one produces a site that is "down" for exactly one person.

What a failed check actually means

When a check fails we name the stage that failed rather than saying "down", because the fixes are entirely different. DNS failure means the name could not be turned into an address — an expired domain or a broken nameserver change. Connection refused means the machine answered but nothing is listening: the web server process has stopped. Timeout means packets vanished — a firewall, a routing problem, or a server too loaded to accept connections. TLS error means the site is running but its certificate is expired or mismatched, and every browser will refuse it.

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