When you cannot connect to the chat server, it could be many factors indeed causing this. Whether the problem lies with your computer, your ISP, the Internet "backbone" providers, the chat server in question, or little gremlins crawling through the public network, Nostrodomos suggests you take a nice walk, call a friend, read a book, or even pet a nice animal, and try again later. But if the urgency to connect to the chat server is overwhelming, you should do the following basic network connectivity tests before contacting the chat servers administrative personnel. If you fail to make this simple checks, you may irriate them. Read below about these diagnostic checks, or skip to diagnostic examples. You should perform a DNS resolution, a ping, and a traceroute of the target server. If that sounds like a bunch a technobabble geekspeak, Nostrodomos agrees with you. A DNS resolution is how a friendly computer name, which is useful to humans but useless to computers, maps to an IP address, which is useful to computer but useless to humans. A name such as "chat.annexcafe.com". If your resolver, um, your computer, cannot resolve the DNS name to an IP address, your computer won't know how to connect to the chat server. And you won't be getting to a web page, email, that fabulous stock ticker, or even those cute little icons on the Yahoo! browser bar. A ping is when your computer send a few chunks of useless data called "packets" to the target chat server, which sends some useless packets back. Neither your computer or the chat server gives a hoot about what's in the data... they just care if they can send and receive it. This tells us the server is alive and responding. If the ping fails, you can get an idea where the problem lies. The traceroute will show the path from your computer to the chat server. Something a "router" goes "down" or a "route" gets lost or corrupted or poisoned. When this happens, you will be unable to connect, even if a DNS resolution succeeds. The traceroute will return a response from every router netween you and the chat server, the last listing of the traceroute being the chat server. Examples and tools with ancient flavors of the Windows operation system are provided below. The data you see on your screen will differ than what is pictured below, but is generally similar. You would need a software tool to do these tests. A freeware tool called Sam Spade runs on all versions of Windows. Read about Sam Spade or download Sam Spade. Run the program, and put the name of the chat server in the box circled below. Then click the DNS button, circled below. If this fails, the problem is with your computer, and it cannot resolve names to IP addresses. You should reboot it, at the very least, and if the problem persists, contact technical support. If this is successful, then click the Ping button, circled below. If the ping fails, perform a traceroute. Click the Trace button below. The last node or listing should be the same IP address as the chat server, as indicated when you did the DNS lookup, which, with the chat.annexcafe.com example, is 206.117.30.247. If you have performed traceroute that ends before the IP address of the server, the problem may lie with the Internet itself, and you should contact your ISP (Internet Service Provider) for guidance.