The use of wireless routers has increased. There have been advancements in technology related to the number of different devices which can be connected to the router, the connection techniques, and much more. At times it becomes little difficult to troubleshoot wireless problems in case your Internet connection stops working or some other problem. Your devices may show that they are connected to the router but the router might not be functioning properly. It is very important to understand the troubleshooting techniques so that you yourself can fix many problems. In this post I will discuss some basic troubleshooting techniques which you yourself can try before calling any technician for help.
First of all understand the topology of your network. The Internet connection which is coming into your house must be having a modem, that modem must be connected to the wireless router and then the devices must be connected to the router wirelessly. If you have a modem-cum-router then you must not be having a modem, but Internet line would be going into the router directly. Let us see how to narrow down to the cause of the problem and fix it.
Step 1. Check if Internet is working on other computers or not. If it is working then the problem is with only one computer and not with the router, or modem, or the Internet connection itself.
Step 2. If Internet connection is not working on all the computers then the first best thing you can try is to power flee your router. This can be done by disconnecting all the cables from the router, switching it off and leaving it like this for a couple of minutes. Then restart the router and try again.
Step 3. If it still doesn’t work then remove the router and connect one of the computers directly to the modem and see if the Internet connection is actually up till the modem or not. If Internet works this ways then definitely the problem is with the router as it is not able to pass the connection beyond it, and if Internet is not working even at the modem then power flee the modem as well.
Step 4. If power fleeing the modem resolves the problem then it is good enough and you can connect the router again in between, but if not then you need to get in touch with your Internet Service Provider because your modem might need to be reconfigured or your connections status needs to be checked at the server or physical level.
Step 5. In case the modem is working but the router is not then you need to go into the router console and check the wireless LAN and DHCP settings. If you have a static IP assigned to the router then check for the same as well. You might want to reset the wireless router and re-configure it to fix the problem.
