When your Internet service is disrupted, there can be many things that have gone wrong. The best way to start is to determine if anything is broken (i.e., you can’t access any websites or Internet services), or if the difficulty is only with a certain program or a specific website not responding.
First Steps to Troubleshooting Internet Access
- If you have more than one computer, see if both computers are experiencing difficulties accessing the Internet. If the second computer has full access, then your problem is the first computer.
- Try rebooting your computer to see if that fixes the problem. You’d be surprised how often this simple step resolves issues.
- If restarting your computer or device doesn’t work, take a look at some of the steps below to investigate the problem.
Troubleshooting Access Problems
If you are having difficulty with your Internet access, the most likely causes are one or more of the following:
- Your high-speed modem and/or router is disconnected or should be rebooted
- Your high-speed modem and/or router has failed
- Your computer is disconnected from the network
- Your computer needs to reboot
Troubleshooting Steps
Try the following series of steps, in this order, to see if this fixes your problem. You can stop at any step when you resolve the issue(s) you are having. These steps assume there is NO Internet access. Specific websites can have outages that have nothing to do with your computer or its settings.
- Verify the modem and the router have power; the Power LED should be green. If the Power LED is off, verify the power cord is connected. If it is and the Power LED is off on the modem or router, then the device has failed and must be replaced. If it is the modem, contact Magna5 immediately.
- Verify the Status LED is solid green on your modem. If it is not, verify the cable is securely seated in the connector.
- Verify the WAN LED on your router is green. If it is not, verify the cable between the router and the modem is securely seated. If the cable is seated properly, please reboot the modem.
- If the WAN LED is green, then check the LAN LED. If it is off or red, check the cable from the LAN port to the computer to ensure it is seated securely. If it is, then replace the cable. If the cable is seated properly, please reboot the router.
- If you continue to have problems and you have a separate modem, you can try connecting your computer to your modem. If the Internet is accessible, try to run your computer with the router again. If that fails, contact your Network Administrator.
Note: It doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes for an unprotected computer to become infected. Be careful while accessing the Internet at this stage, particularly if you are using Internet Explorer.