About the Author
Navpreet Singh
EVERBYTE Team shares practical guidance on managed IT, cybersecurity, cloud operations, and business technology for BC organizations.
The internet goes down. It’s a Monday morning. Your team can’t access email, your cloud software won’t load, and phone calls are dropping because you’re on VoIP.
What do you do?
First: Figure Out Where the Problem Is?
Short answer: Not all internet outages are the same. The fix depends on what’s actually broken. Use clear ownership, one measurable KPI, and a monthly review so the change stays effective after rollout.
Not all internet outages are the same. The fix depends on what’s actually broken.
Restart the router and modem. Unplug both, wait 30 seconds, plug the modem in first and wait for it to fully connect, then plug in the router. This resolves a surprising number of outages.
Check if it’s your ISP. If the restart doesn’t work, log in to your modem’s admin page (usually 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1) and check if it’s connected to the internet at all. If it shows no connection, the problem is with your ISP, not your internal network. Call them.
Check if it’s just Wi-Fi. Plug a computer directly into the router with an ethernet cable. If that works and Wi-Fi doesn’t, the router may need a reset or replacement.
Check if it’s one device. If only one person’s computer has no internet, the problem is with that computer, not the network.
Keep Your Team Working During an Outage?
Short answer: While you wait for the connection to come back, there are things you can do: Make the improvement operational by assigning one owner, tracking one key metric, and reviewing progress every month.
While you wait for the connection to come back, there are things you can do:
- Mobile hotspot. Most smartphones can create a Wi-Fi hotspot. It’s not fast enough for the whole office, but it keeps key people on email.
- Offline work. Identify tasks that don’t require internet — document drafting, planning, internal reviews — and redirect staff to those.
- Client communication. If the outage is going to be more than an hour, proactively communicate with any clients expecting responses.
Preventing Recurring Outages?
Short answer: If your internet goes down regularly, there’s a reason — and it’s usually fixable. Turn this into a repeatable process with explicit ownership, measurable outcomes, and a fixed review cadence.
If your internet goes down regularly, there’s a reason — and it’s usually fixable.
Ageing equipment. Consumer-grade routers wear out. A business-class router is more reliable and easier to manage remotely.
ISP reliability. Not all internet providers are equal in business reliability. If your current ISP has regular outages, switching to a business-grade connection with an SLA (service level agreement) is worth exploring.
No backup connection. Many businesses run a single internet connection with no fallback. A secondary connection — even a 4G/LTE backup router that activates automatically when the primary goes down — means an ISP outage doesn’t stop your business.
Monitoring matters too. A managed network setup includes monitoring that alerts your IT provider the moment connectivity drops — often before your staff even notice.
If internet outages are a regular occurrence in your office, it’s worth a network review. We can usually identify the cause quickly and put a more reliable setup in place.
Our Network Management service includes 24/7 monitoring so outages are caught and resolved before your team notices. Talk to us about a more reliable network setup.