VPS Connection Troubleshooting

This guide is about figuring out if the connection trouble to your instance is from the instance or your local internet. This article is intended for Hostwinds Cloud and VPS clients who have access to the Cloud Portal.

Troubleshoot a Local Network Connection

For Linux:

Step One: Login to your Instance as the root user

Step Two: Type the command

ifconfig 

Step Three: Check if there is an eth0: it should look something like this on the next couple lines:

"eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500"
 "inet 11.222.333.444 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 11.222.333.444" (this is your IPv4 IP) 

Suppose you see that then your instance does have its network connection. You can then verify it with a quick ping test:

ping -c 4 hostwinds.com 

If you get an output like this :

--- hostwinds.com ping statistics ---
 4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3002ms
 rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.383/1.725/5.648/2.265 ms 

If you're not receiving any packet loss, then your instance is connected to the network, and it may be an issue with your local ISP. Some basic network troubleshooting can be done to check your local internet and make sure you can reach the instance by running a traceroute. We have a guide on how to do this here.

For Windows:

Step One: Login to your administrator account

Step Two: Open your command prompt by pressing "Windows key+r" and typing in cmd

Step Three: Type in the command

ipconfig 

Step Four: There should be output similar to this:

Ethernet adapter Ethernet:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
 Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : ffff::1111:2222:bbbb:1234 (This is your IPv6 address)
 IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 111.222.333.444 (this is your IPv4 address)
 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 (This is your subnet mask)
 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 111.222.000.1 (this is the default gateway) 

If you get an output similar to the output above, then you have an internet connection, and you can check it with this command:

ping hostwinds.com 

This should get an output like this:

Ping statistics for 104.168.240.4:
 Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
 Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
 Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms 

Please contact our support team by opening a ticket if you need any further assistance and have Hostwinds Managed Services. You can also reach us in Live Chat.