Tip of the Week: What to Do When the Internet Goes Out

Losing Internet can be a large problem in the business world, as we all become more and more reliant on it. Downtime of this kind can be immensely frustrating. However, not all hope is lost, as there are ways to troubleshoot the cause of an Internet outage.

Check your Hardware
First and foremost, check to make sure that all cables are still securely plugged in. If your router was just unplugged somehow, your troubleshooting may be completed much faster. However, should your problem be something other than a loose Ethernet cable, there are other methods to figuring out what happened to your Internet.

There may also be an issue with your modem or router, which the status lights on these components will indicate. Sometimes all it will take to fix this issue is a hard restart by disconnecting and reconnecting the power supply to the component. However, sometimes your device may be due to be replaced.

Ping a Website
Once you’ve determined that your connection issues aren’t due to a problem with your equipment, you should try sending a ping command to a website. In your Start menu, access the Command Prompt window. Type in ping google.com. This tells your computer to send data packets to Google. If any of these packets are lost, as displayed in the Command Prompt window, there could be a problem present. This problem could be in your network, with your Internet Service Provider, or with the website itself. If a few or more websites lose packets when pinged, the problem probably isn’t your network.

If the pings you send are successful, but your connection isn’t, the website itself is likely having issues. If you are able, check Down Detector or Down For Everyone Or Just Me to see if the website is at fault.

Scan for Malware
If your connection issues are limited to a single workstation or device, your software may have something to do with it; or, it could be a malware infection. This can be identified with a quick scan of the affected system.

DNS Issues
Finally, your Internet Service Provider could be the one having issues, more specifically, with its Domain Name Server. If you are unable to access a website with its IP address, your ISP is the one having a problem.

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