Hoping some of the techno-brains might have a simple answer to this.

Over the last couple of weeks our internet stops working at what seems to be a fairly regular time each day.
The devices stay connected – so the Wi-Fi symbol is still there – so I think the devices are talking to the router, but there is no internet connection to re-load web pages, use Spotify etc.

The only cure is to pull the power on the router & plug it back in. When the router fires up again, the internet connection is fine and it all starts working again. It’s almost like there is a timed cut-out in the router that is triggering daily, or the internet provider is doing the same thing (cutting the internet at a certain time) until we break the connection & re-make it. We are with TalkTalk.

The only thing that has changed is the channel that the router is using. I downloaded a Wi-Fi analyser that reckoned all the Wi-Fi signals within range were all on channel 11; as was ours. There was some suggestion that moving to a less cluttered channel would potentially speed the internet up a little bit – so I swapped channels on the router, by going into the settings via the IP address thingy on the bottom of the router.

Any help/suggestions appreciated.

I’ve had exactly the same issue with Plusnet. They are going to send out a new router but because it’s out of warranty I need to sign up for another contract, which is no skin off my nose.

Funnily enough, since I’ve renewed my contract, it’s been fine: coincidence? Probably, but I haven’t even received the new router yet.

mikey74 – Member

I’ve had exactly the same issue with Plusnet. They are going to send out a new router but because it’s out of warranty I need to sign up for another contract, which is no skin off my nose.

Funnily enough, since I’ve renewed my contract, it’s been fine: coincidence? Probably, but I haven’t even received the new router yet

I did wonder if it was the router. Ours isn’t a TalkTalk router though. We did use the TalkTalk provided one when we first moved into this house, but got really weak signal once you strayed from the room the router was in. I dug an old Netgear router out & use that instead.
My instinct says it’s more of a ‘set-up’ issue than a fault, either with the router, or something our internet provider is doing.

At work or at home? Sounds like some other device is “blocking” the internet connection – could another device somehow be either grabbing the IP of the router or making itself the default gateway? Long shot, but not impossible! Do you (or someone else if it’s at work) do “something” at about the same time the internet drops?

My mum had something similar on her router (a Belkin).

Turned out there was a setting on the router which basically cut the broadband connection after so many hours of no use (feature for people who paid for connection time).

Stumped me for months until I found the setting and realised what it did.

Do you still have the Talk Talk router?

You could plug that back in as a test.

If this proves to be stable, you could look at a new router or re purpose the ‘flaky internet connection’ one as a wireless access point.

Issues like this can be frustrating and take ages to fix – so don’t!

Just plug the router into a timer switch and set it to go off for a minute sometime before your normal day starts. simples 🙂

Constant rebooting of the router will likely cause speed issues over time, the providers line management software will think there’s a problem and drop the sync speed to try and stabilise the connection. So do fix it 🙂

woody, serious question – how much monitoring does an IP actually do for this type of thing? If the OP’s issue is as predictable as it seems shouldn’t they have already picked it up?

How about a little faultfinding?

How about logging in to the router when it drops?
If you can log in then its not the wifi.
If you can log into the router is the adsl line still connected?
What do the lights on the front show?
If you can’t log in it might be the router or the laptop
Does it happen on all devices or just one?
What happens if your try a hard wired connection rather than wifi?

EE do it too though.
Always around the same time of day the connection will reduce to dial up speeds.
On/off resolves it but it shouldn’t be necessary.
EE say theres no issue, no throttling, etc

woody2000 – Member

At work or at home? Sounds like some other device is “blocking” the internet connection – could another device somehow be either grabbing the IP of the router or making itself the default gateway? Long shot, but not impossible! Do you (or someone else if it’s at work) do “something” at about the same time the internet drops?

This is at home. I doubt there is any other device blocking the internet connection – I am not very clued up on IT beyond getting the basics set-up.
We only have the router & then phones/tablets and a laptop connected to it.
I don’t think we are ‘doing something’ to induce the problem. I generally come home from work & say to my Wife ‘how long has the internet not been working for?’ to which she replies ‘dunno, sometime this afternoon’. After a few days of this, we realised it seems to be a daily occurrence.

mrlugz – Member

Do you still have the Talk Talk router?

You could plug that back in as a test.

It’s probably in the loft. If I plugged that back in and it worked fine, I suppose that would narrow it down to a fault with the Netgear router or a setting within the router that shouldn’t be set to whatever it is.

captmorgan – Member

How about a little faultfinding?

How about logging in to the router when it drops?
I’ve not tried this; I will do tonight if I get in this evening & it’s borked.

If you can log in then its not the wifi.
The way I see it, the router acts as a door to the internet. It seems that my devices ‘can get to the door’ but ‘can’t get through the door’. I suspect that I would be able to log-into the router, but need to try this.

If you can log into the router is the adsl line still connected?
erm. I will try to log in, but am not sure how I’d know if the adsl line is still connected. I will do some Googling.

What do the lights on the front show?
They are randomly flickering, but I’d have to look up the manual to tell if it is ‘normal’ light behaviour or it’s trying to tell me something. I can’t remember what it does normally to know if it was doing something ‘wrong’

If you can’t log in it might be the router or the laptop
Will try logging in

Does it happen on all devices or just one?
My wife’s phone & tablet & my tablet. I generally don’t then try the laptop or my phone, as I figure they won’t connect either.

What happens if your try a hard wired connection rather than wifi?.
Dunno. That would require crawling around in the loft to look for an Ethernet cable & firing up the laptop. Will do that, if need be though.

Thanks. A few things to consider!!

I’ve seen scenarios where a device has picked up the router’s IP address (either misconfigured or faulty DHCP assignment), and suddenly the internet isn’t there because what was the gateway IP now belongs to a phone or a laptop instead of the router. Like I said, a long shot! 🙂

woody2000 are you still communicating in English?! 😆

OK, humour me here.

Do you have flashing Christmas lights?

We recently set up our Christmas tree and suddenly had all sorts of problems with our wireless and internet connection.

It took us a day or so to connect the two, but turned the lights off and the problem went away immediately.

My Netgear router has a feature that can turn the WiFi off at certain times, on a schedule (we have been known to use this to limit children’s usage, and to limit evening use). It may be this (long shot).

cbmotorsport – Member

OK, humour me here.

Do you have flashing Christmas lights?

We recently set up our Christmas tree and suddenly had all sorts of problems with our wireless and internet connection.

It took us a day or so to connect the two, but turned the lights off and the problem went away immediately.

Ooooh, we do but they aren’t up yet. But, we have installed a couple of permanently on night lights in the hall & on the landing upstairs that have light sensors in & come on when it gets dark (new baby requires frequent nocturnal stumbling around in the dark). I wonder if they are causing some interference….worth checking out anyway.

kcal – Member

My Netgear router has a feature that can turn the WiFi off at certain times, on a schedule

Sounds like I need to log-in to the router & make sure I haven’t inadvertently changed a setting or two…..! Cheers.

oh, re-raeding your OP – if the WiFi symbol stays up, then that’s less likely (ours just dumps the WiFi completely).

If the channel has been changed, then I guess you need to change it back to verify..
I also guess you need to check the logs.

First thing to do (as has already been mentioned) is to identify whether it’s a wireless issue or an internet connection issue. As the previous poster said if you can easily logon wirelessly to your router admin webpage when the connection is down or on a go-slow then it’s likely that the internet connection is the problem and not the wireless network. Also, you could try using speedtest.net to test your internet connection speed in your browser (take a baseline first when the internet connection is good). It’s possible that something you have introduced to your home network is hogging your bandwidth …a couple of candidates that have caused me issues recently are Google Drive; have you dropped a very large file onto your cloud storage that is trying to sync up, or Apple Photo Library or something similar? …and an app called Tu Go from O2 that bridges mobile calls onto our home broadband was hogging all our bandwidth periodically. If you have a router that gives you some sort of diagnostics and/or traffic stats from various end points then this may help identify the root cause, otherwise you will have to use a process of elimination by switching off internet connected devices one by one (or all at once then re-introduce them one by one).

One thing I’ve learned through experience is that I wouldn’t automatically blame the ISP or the router …and try and eliminate all other causes before going down the road of calling out an engineer, for which you will be charged handsomely if they find no fault.

So then – last night it was down again, but my tablet was showing no Wi-Fi symbol at all – the list of Wi-Fi connections had my network as ‘remembered, out of range’.
Firing up the laptop & attempting to log-in to the router over Wi-Fi didn’t work as I suspected it wouldn’t, given there was no Wi-Fi symbol now showing.

That was as far as I got before deciding I couldn’t be arsed with going into the loft to hunt for an Ethernet cable.

Lights on the front of the router were showing as normal, I think. I did write them down, but now can’t remember what they were. One was power, one was internet & there was a third one. They were all green.

Might try & scavenge an Ethernet cable from work to have another fiddle this evening.

bravesirrobin –

As above – yesterday I was unable to even log into the router wirelessly.
Apart from changing the channel on the router, we haven’t added anything to the network – there is no cloud storage, definitely nothing Apple related, no NAS etc.

Turning the router off & back on again sorted it out. I think I am going to have to dig the old TalkTalk router out of the loft at some point to see if that works OK.

Thanks all once again.