Simple steps to troubleshoot your internet connection

Next time the internet is slow or non-working, try the following to isolate the problem:

1.            Click on the Start button and in the “Search Programs and Files” box, type CMD

2.            Right click on the CMD icon at the top of the menu and left click on “Run as administrator”.

3.            Answer Yes to the User Account Control dialog. This will then open a black DOS window.

4.            Type “ipconfig /all” and press the Enter key. Look through the information on the screen and find the following values and write them down (Your numbers may likely be different than what is shown in this example:

                IPv4 Address………………………………………………………….: 192.168.1.11
                Default Gateway………………………………………………………: 192.168.1.1
                DNS Servers…………………………………………………………..: 75.75.76.76

5.            Click in this window and at the blinking cursor, type (without the quotation marks)” ping 192.168.1.11” and press Enter. You should receive 4 replies. This is the numeric address of your computer.

6.            Next, type “ping 192.168.1.1” and press Enter. This is the internal address of your router. With each of these tests, you should receive 4 replies.

7.            Now, “ping 75.75.76.76” and press Enter. This is what is called a DNS server. This server MUST respond for you to be able to get to the internet. This is the computer that translates a name (like Yahoo.com) into numbers.

8.            Finally, “ping yahoo.com” and press Enter. This should return a series of replies as well.

If you don’t get a reply at any of these steps, that is where the problem most likely is. If you get replies from ALL of these, but still cannot get on the internet, then the problem is with your web browser and that will need to be addressed separately.