Here are some tools for trouble-shooting network connectivity issues between the internet and the department. Bookmark these for future use.
The University runs an Ookla Speedtest server, to measure the network speed at the moment between yourself and the University. Click the GO button and wait for it to complete. Lower ping times are better. Download and upload speeds are usually limited by your connection to the internet. Home internet services often have much higher download than upload speeds. Jitter can be ignored. Run this when things are working well, and note the results: this will give you a normal baseline to compare to, later.
CSLab makes network connectivity tests every minute or two from CSLab to various external sites, including sites at major Toronto-area ISPs, and notes the results here. 'Last online' is the time since the last successful test. 'Last offline' is the time since the last unsuccessful test. 'Latency' is the time it took for the test data to travel to the destination and back, in seconds (typically this is a small fraction of a second). Click to see historical data for a given site (up to one week).
The University's Information Technology Services (ITS) group provides a current status page for various University-wide services, including major university networks. If you cannot reach the department, ITS could be doing network maintenance that affects connectivity. You can also check here the current status of various University online services, such as AMS and UTMail+.
Bookmark this one. It checks to see if CSLab's support site can be reached from a standard place on the Internet. If you can't reach CSLab, try your bookmark of this, and it will tell you if it thinks the connectivity issue to CSLab is for everyone, or just you.