Working remotely

This past Monday I had problems with my wireless network which prevented me from having access to the internet. I thought at the time it was a problem with my isp, as I had thought before, but playing with the settings created a voila moment, miraculously allowing network access.

Today for some inexplicable reason I cannot access a site that I use to run a web app.. In fact half of the sites I use, all on the same server, are unreachable - the other half are fine. I can't continue with the work I was doing 5 minutes before the outage.

Is this the 21st century equivalent of my car won't start?

Our increasing dependence on complex magical systems like the internet for our livelyhood makes me wonder what would happen if there were extended outages or increased unreliability at just the worst possible moment. There is no 'internet bus' to take to work.