Tech Table Tuesday, April 15, 2014
April 15, 2014
Justin: Welcome to MPA’s Tech Table. I’m Justin.
Diana: And I’m Diana.
Justin: And we’re your hosts. We’ll be serving up a heaping spoonful of all things tech.
Diana: We promise it’ll be easy to digest. Hello there, Justin.
Justin: Hello, Diana. It’s Tuesday at the Tech Table.
Diana: Yes, it is Tuesday.
Justin: Today we’re going to talk about a common thing.
Diana: What’s that?
Justin: Your internet is not working.
Diana: Oh, what a frustration.
Justin: It’s like your life comes to a grinding halt, doesn’t it? It’s terrible.
Diana: Why me?
Justin: I know, it is. It really is. I know at our house, yeah, when the internet goes out… We have two routers and a wifi. It’s crazy stuff.
Diana: Yeah, public and the private.
Justin: Yeah, exactly. So when ours goes down though, yeah, it’s… Even when it gets slow I get cranky. You can tell when it slows down.
Diana: Don’t like a cranky Justin.
Justin: No. No. No one likes a cranky Justin. That’s for sure. So when your internet is not working what do you do? This is what I do. The first thing that I do is reboot the router.
Diana: Yes.
Justin: You can do this by unplugging this and wait about 30 seconds. You know? They used to say that. Unplug it and let it for like 30 seconds…
Diana: It used to be that your computer, when you would turn it off and back on, if you had to restart it, you were supposed to wait at least ten seconds. I even remember when my mom would tell me, “Wait a minute.” I don’t know if she was just being over protective.
Justin: Probably. She was probably thinking that if she said a minute to you that it would feel like 30 seconds.
Diana: It would feel like… Yeah.
Justin: I don’t know but 30 seconds and then plug it back in and it will hopefully come back up. That’s what we do with our router. You can tell. With our router it slows down. The internet gets slower and slower and then it just stops working. Then you reboot it.
Diana: And it’s usually fine then.
Justin: Then it comes back then. Yeah. But do wait that 30 seconds because if you don’t it won’t have time to reset. There’s something about that. Good. Then test another device. If your internet’s not working and rebooting doesn’t fix it, try connecting to the internet with another advice. That will help you rule out that it’s not the computer itself or something like that.
Diana: Right. Yeah. Just some simple scientific experimentation there.
Justin: With your phone, if you have wifi, see if the wifi signal is working.
Diana: Or if you have a tablet or another laptop, try it out.
Justin: Right, exactly. The third one, then call your internet provider. Oh, what a drag. No one ever wants to really call your internet provider but there may be a larger issue that they’re addressing at that very moment.
Diana: Right, it might be down for everyone.
Justin: It is or it might be down on their end but at your location. That does happen to where it’s just a fluke problem in your box or whatever that’s on the outside of your house.
Diana: Yes. A lot of times they’ll resend the signal or…
Justin: Yeah, they do all sorts of who know what. I remember one time our internet went down, couldn’t get it back up, and they just went and checked something at their office and literally there was just a wire that was loosely connected somewhere in their big system…
Diana: My word.
Justin: …Just our internet some how. I don’t know.
Diana: If that still doesn’t fix it…
Justin: Then you need to call a technician probably and have them come and look at it. It could be that router. It could be something else.
Diana: Right.
Justin: Yeah, so call a computer repair technician and have them come and check it out.
Diana: Yeah, but that’s kind of your last resort. You can really try those other steps and typically it will work then.
Justin: Yeah, and I think typically our technicians just send a router. We just try a new router. That’s one of the first things that we do or we say call your internet provider; those two things.
Diana: A lot of people can log in remotely with you, technicians can, and can look at your computer settings.
Justin: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s a little hint hopefully on your internet not working. Until next time…
Diana: Take care.
Justin: Tech Table is brought to you by MPA of Bloomfield, Iowa, and Gods Country Radio. You can visit us online at askmpa.com.
Diana: If you have questions or comments, please send them to questions@askmpa.com. That’s questions@askmpa.com.
Justin: And thanks for listening.
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