DNS Troubleshooting Checklist: The 10-Step Process I Use for Every Client Call

It happens every week without fail. The phone rings, it's a client in a panic — a shop in Tuam, a solicitor's office in Clifden, a small hotel out near Connemara — and the first thing they say is "the internet's gone." Nine times out of ten, it's not the internet. It's DNS. DNS troubleshooting is one of those things that looks like black magic until you have a repeatable process. Over the past decade doing network and infrastructure work across the West of Ireland, I've built a DNS troubleshooting checklist that I run through on every single call, in roughly the same order, every time. It gets the job done. Here it is. Step 1: Confirm It's Actually a DNS Issue Before you touch anything, verify the problem. A DNS failure means names aren't resolving — but other network issues can look identical to the uninitiated. Quick test: ping 8.8.8.8 If that works but a website doesn't load, you've got a DNS issue. If even the ping fails, you're dealing with a broader connectivity problem and DNS i