It's late at night, you're trying to send out that last work email before hittin' the hay, and your Internet connection goes down. Is your wireless network down? Has your laptop lost connectivity to your wireless router? Has your Comcast/Verizon/Roadrunner/(insert your provider here) Internet connection gone down?
A situation we're sure many of you have faced. What's the quickest way to fix the problem?
Here's our Top 5 Ways to Fix a Broken Wireless Network:
1) Check all your connections. Check all your cable connections; it's amazing how often something comes loose. Is the cable/phone line from the wall to the modem plugged in correctly? Is the cable from the modem to your wireless router plugged in? If you're running a wired network, are the cables from the router to your computers all plugged in? If you're running a wireless network is the network card in your notebook turned on?
2) Check your power. Check the power on your modem and your wireless router. Are they both turned on?
3) Isolate the problem. If the computer you are using is connected to your network with a wireless connection, take that computer to where your router is and plug it directly into the router with an ethernet cable.
Wait about 2 minutes and then see if you can visit a few popular sites on the Internet like www.cnn.com or www.google.com . If you can successfully see these sites then you know your Internet connection is OK and you have a problem with your wireless network. If you can't successfully get to Internet sites, plug your computer directly into the modem. Wait about 2 minutes and try to visit popular Internet sites again. If you still can't access them, there is a problem with your modem or Internet connection.
4) Restart your modem. If you've determined you have a problem with your modem or Internet connection, keep your computer plugged directly into the modem, unplug the power to your modem and wait 2 minutes. Plug the power back in to the modem. It may take several minutes for your modem to resynch. As you wait try to visit a few popular websites like www.cnn.com or www.google.com . If it still isn't working after 5 minutes, restart your computer and try again.
5) Restart your router. If you've determined the connection to the Internet is OK, then your problem must be with your wireless router, or with the connection from the router to your computer. Connect your computer by ethernet wire to your router. Unplug the power to your wireless router and wait 2 minutes. Then plug the power back in. Now try visiting some top Internet sites for at least 5 minutes. If you still can't access those sites, your wireless router has a problem. We recommend visiting the support website for your router and seeing what they recommend. If you can successfully reach Internet sites, then your problem must be with the wireless connection between the router and your computer. Unplug your computer from the router. Then shut down and restart your computer. Wait at least 10-15 minutes to see if your computer can find your wireless network. You can keep trying to reach popular web sites during this time. Important point: you've got to be patient with this step. It can take Windows PCs quite awhile to find and get back on to a wireless network. If you still can't reach the Internet, think about what you may have changed with your wireless network setup recently. Did you change your network's password (often called the SSID)? Did you change any security settings? If you haven't changed anything recently, we can tell you that sometimes wireless network cards just die, so if you have an alternate card you may want to try installing that card to see if it works.
We hope you find this Top 5 list helpful in your troubleshooting. Wireless home networks are definitely not as easy to troubleshoot and manage as they should be. There is a bit of good news however. There are now products out there to help you more quickly troubleshoot wireless (or wired) home network problems and fix them. One really good solution we've found is Network Magic from Pure Networks. You install this software on each of the computers in your network and it immediately shows you a detailed map of your network. This is extremely handy when something goes wrong, because Network Magic pinpoints the problem on the map and has wizards to help you fix the problem. Network Magic also makes setting up Windows file and printer sharing a snap. The product can be downloaded from www.networkmagic.com and has a free 14 day trial. After the trial you can purchase Network Magic for $49.95. If it saves you 2 hours of troubleshooting time one time, it has paid for itself easily.
