Tip of the Week: 4 Steps to Quickly Troubleshoot Your Internet Connection

There’s a special kind of frustration that accompanies a dropped Internet connection. In such dire times, try these four troubleshooting tips before hitting the panic button.

Determine How Widespread the Problem Is
If you’re working at in office and sharing an Internet connection with others, then the first thing you’ll want to do is ask around if others are also without Internet access. This will help you quickly determine if the problem resides with your computer, or if it’s a bigger issue involving your building’s Internet connection or your ISP.

Perform an Equipment Check
Generally speaking, it takes a lot of equipment and cables to make your Internet connection possible. All it takes is one weak link in the chain for your Internet connection to fail. Therefore, try finding the weak link by going through your equipment and making sure that everything is plugged in and working properly. Check your router, the Ethernet cables going to and from your router, the cable connecting to your PC, etc.

Keep Wireless Restrictions in Mind
For the most part, a wired Internet connection is more reliable than a wireless connection. Therefore, if you’ve lost Internet connection on your mobile device, try moving to a different spot that’s closer to the router and a place that’s not impeded by physical objects like walls and floors. Also, if you find yourself in a spot where several other devices are tapping into the same wireless signal, then you may want to move away from these other devices for a better connection. If these measures don’t work, try restarting your wireless router.

Is There Anything Else Eating Your Bandwidth?
There’s only so much bandwidth to go around. A dropped Internet connection may mean that something else is eating more of your bandwidth than you expect. Is someone else in your office downloading a large file? Are too many users trying to participate in a video conference? Is your software performing an update during peak business hours? Is everybody streaming media at the same time? If this happens to be the case, and this happens frequently, then you’ll want to upgrade to an Internet package that offers more bandwidth.

When it comes to your company’s Internet connection, a dropped connection is much more than an annoyance. It equates to expensive downtime and lost productivity. This is especially the case if many of the mission-critical tasks that you’re dependent on require a working Internet connection. Therefore, enterprises want to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. This is why it’s so important that you set up your network in such a way as to maximize your Internet connection and minimize the amount of downtime experienced.

When Washington Works maps out your network, we have the goal of maximum uptime in mind. Plus, if your network is already set up and you’re experiencing downtime-causing issues like loss of Internet, lag, or anything else, we can perform a network audit and determine what’s causing the issue. To learn more, give us a call at 301-571-5040.