Sacramento Home Network Troubleshooting Service
Whatever network gremlins are keeping you up at night, give us a call at 1-800-919-6373 or fill out our contact form if you want a skilled Sacramento tech to come to your home and make all your home network troubleshooting problems disappear.
What is a home network?
Before we start talking about troubleshooting, it’s probably worth taking a minute to get right down into the nitty-gritty of what a home network actually is.
Broadly speaking a home network refers to all the Internet-connected technologies in your home. Got a smart speaker sitting on your kitchen counter? That’s part of your home network. Do you have a few of those cool speakers that can stream music through your whole home? Yep, that’s part of your home network too. And of course, all the technologies that actually make your Internet connection happen — modems, routers, ethernet cables — these are part of your home network too, forming a crucial backbone on which all those other technologies rely.
There is also an interesting assortment of “somewhere in between” technologies, that sit somewhere between your modem/router combo and all your devices. A classic example is a “switch.” This device can handle multiple ethernet runs to different corners of your house. Another piece of tech you’ll commonly find in older homes in Sacramento is a WiFi range extender. Older homes frequently experience WiFi black spots and a range extender can fix that.
So let’s talk about home network troubleshooting: Can you do it at home?
Before we get down to some tips you can try for home network troubleshooting at home, let’s cut right to the chase. As you’ve probably already gathered, your typical home network has a lot of moving parts. And the more moving parts a thing has, the harder it is to make that thing behave. If something goes wrong, home network troubleshooting can quickly become a real head-scratcher (and not in a good way, with one of those cool deluxe model wire spider things.)
So if you try the stuff we describe below and you’re still at your wit’s end, remember that Nerds on Call offers a deluxe home network troubleshooting service that easily rivals the relief bringing potential of a luxury label head-scratcher. We’re Sacramento local and offer a fully mobile service. We can come to you!
That number again: 1-800-919-6373.
But you can perform some home network troubleshooting yourself. And it’s a great idea to try these things before attempting anything more involved. Here are three basic tricks you can try if your home network suddenly stops working.
1. Power cycle your modem and router
If you’ve attempted some level of home network troubleshooting in the past, a website or YouTube channel might have suggested turning everything off and then back on again. This isn’t bad advice. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do that. The right way is to power cycle.
- Start by turning off your Internet-connected devices, followed by both your modem and your router. Then wait for at least 30 seconds. The waiting is actually important because many devices will hold on to some residual power for a surprising length of time.
- Now plug in your modem and do a bit more waiting. Why? Because however fast your Sacramento Internet Service Provider claims to be, one thing that won’t change much is the boot time of a cable modem. We recommend giving the boot sequence a good couple of minutes.
- When you can see a solid “online” light on your modern, power up your router. You guessed it, now wait a few more minutes. Did we mention home network troubleshooting takes patience and time?
- As a final step, turn on your devices and check their connectivity.
For every Sacramento house call we do, a power cycle is one of our first home network troubleshooting steps. It’s amazing how often a simple reset can bump a network back into working order.
2. Next, check for connection outages
If power cycling didn’t work, it’s a good idea to direct your home network troubleshooting further afield. It could be that your Internet Service Provider is struggling. Or perhaps one service you’re using (for example, Netflix or a cloud storage service like OneDrive) is experiencing performance issues.
Fortunately, you don’t have to check these services one by one! Instead, just jump onto a network continuity website like Downdetector. On this site, you’ll see a list of services and the option to drill down to outages reported in Sacramento. Choose your service, then your area. You’ll see a neat summary of service interruptions.
3. See if you can get a connection direct to your modem
When you’re home network troubleshooting without success, one thing you can do is isolate one part of your network from another. You can achieve that by plugging an ethernet cable directly into the back of your modem and connecting that to your computer or laptop. Instantly, your WiFi network is removed from the equation!
If you have no connection, you know the problem is happening somewhere between your modem and your service provider. If, on the other hand, you suddenly discover you do have a connection, you can be confident the problem is happening somewhere between your router (the thing that makes WiFi work) and your various devices. This is vital data that one of our Sacramento techs can use to help you drill deeper into the home network troubleshooting process.
If all else fails…
If you’ve tried some home network troubleshooting but just can’t get the results you’re looking for, we can help. Nerds on Call have been helping computer owners in Sacramento and surrounding areas since 2004. We’ve seen it all! We charge a flat rate for our home network troubleshooting service, and we’ll give you a free, no-obligation quote before any work begins.
Just give us a call at 1-800-919-6373 or fill out our contact form. We’re home network troubleshooting specialists.
