So 12:30 rolls around and everything in my mother in-laws house that is connected to the router suddenly looses connection. My wife says its the FBI doing some net thing to stop malware and that the net should be fine soon. 12 hours down tops...

I shrug in acceptance and turn in for the night. But on a lark, I decide to read up on this event with my phone. Now I am worried.

In all my reading of news articles, I find not one mention of the net going down for maintinance, only references to ways of protecting AGAINST loss of net.

Is my Google-Fu weak this night, or was my wife mistaken and our collective cache of a wii, x-box, ps3, and 4 laptops all infected?

Its bad enough I am stuck here for a week, but to be stuck with no net?! Crit me now...

I read the title "My net is down"...and immediately thought "then how is he posting...?"

Still, that's bizarre.

No, no one is shutting down the Internet. Idiot journalists without technical knowledge are once again creating bogus headlines to create fear and panic!

What's going on is that last year, a computer virus was released that changed the DNS setting (see below for quick description). It set up to look up to a bogus server instead, so everytime infected computers went somewhere, they had to (unknowingly) contact the virus' authors. When they were caught, the FBI set up a replacement for that server, so that people would still be able to connect, and to notify them that they are infected.

What is DNS: computers deal with IP addresses (such as 173.194.75.147). That's not very likely that we puny Humans will remember all those numbers, so a system was devised where we could type in "www.google.com", the computer would query a server (the DNS), and return the IP address above. With that address, the computer can now contact Google. The address of the DNS, however, has to be entered somewhere, and this is what the virus changed.

According to this page, people infected would have seen a warning whenever using Google. All anti-viruses should have been able to detect this virus for a long time now. The FBI has warned a lot of people. In short, if you're still infected, chances are you ignored every warning.

While it is possible that all 4 laptops are infected, it is unlikely that the Wii is infected, because, like a Mac, it doesn't run Windows code, and the virus was made for Windows. The most likely scenario is that the router has the wrong DNS setting. Your Internet provider will be able to supply you with the correct DNS address, but most likely won't be able to tell you how to enter it into your router, unless that "router" is a Windows computer. You're probably best off calling a local computer shop so they can dispatch a tech. I would also recommend having him do a thorough virus & malware scan, because it is unlikely that you have only a single virus.

Good luck!

Edit: just for kicks, go on one of those computers that can't access the net, and type in this address in a web browser: http://173.194.75.147/ You should see the Google page come up. You still won't be able to go anywhere else, but that should be proof that the Internet is still there.

Also keep in mind that while the internet as a whole isn't going down your local server certainly could be down or suffering some kind of infection or attack...

Turn off all your laptops and entertainment devices. Do not put your router or modem in to standby mode or turn them off.

Unplug Everything from power.

Hook your modem up to power first. Wait until all but one, maybe two of the lights are on. This depends on the type of modem you have.

Hook your router up to power.

Then hook everything else back up to power. Turn them back on. Do a little dance.

If that doesn't work, call your local internet provider and say "WTF Wallace?!"

Ok, the miss's mom said that apparently the net crashes and reboots itself every morn at some point between 12:30 and 2.

I find it odd that the dottering old woman with her back brace and walker could come out to the living room at 12:30 to complain about how, if not for the crash, she would have finally gotten top spot in a battlefield 3 GunMaster match, but couldnt tell us that this was normal until 2 days later...

BTW, thats the main reason I dont like staying there... Not the annoying pack of small dogs, not the fact that we have to sleep on a fold out loveseat, not the fact that she insists on cooking (and by effect, us eating) really bland yet greasy meals...

Its the damn trashtalk...