Your internet just went down. Before you call Rogers — or TELUS, or whoever your ISP is — spend five minutes on this checklist. About half the time, the problem is inside your building, not outside it. And if it is inside, the fix usually takes ten minutes, not a two-hour service window.
Step 1: Is it just you, or everyone?
Ask around. If it’s only one computer, the problem is almost certainly that computer — a bad network cable, a disabled adapter, a driver issue. If it’s one area of the office, check the switch or access point serving that area. If it’s the whole office, then you have an actual outage to diagnose.
Step 2: Check if Rogers (or TELUS) has a known outage
This takes 30 seconds and tells you whether you’re about to waste time troubleshooting something you can’t fix. Rogers has an outage checker — put in your address and it will tell you if there’s a known problem in your area. TELUS has the same. You can also check Downdetector for real-time reports from other users in your area.
If there’s a confirmed outage, stop troubleshooting and wait. There’s nothing to fix on your end.
Step 3: Restart the modem and router — in the right order
This sounds obvious, but it’s often skipped or done wrong. The order matters:
- Unplug the modem (the box your ISP installed) from power. Wait a full 60 seconds.
- Unplug the router from power while the modem is still off.
- Plug the modem back in. Wait for all its lights to stabilize — usually 60–90 seconds.
- Plug the router back in. Wait another 60 seconds.
Impatient restarts — where you pull the plug and immediately plug it back in — often don’t clear the issue. The 60-second wait is what resets the connection state.
Step 4: Check your physical connections
Before assuming something is broken electronically, check what you can see. The cable running from your modem to your router can work its way loose. A cable that looks plugged in but isn’t fully seated will give you exactly this symptom. If you have a patch panel or network cabinet, check that nothing obvious has been knocked out.
Step 5: Run a speed test wired at the modem
This is the single most useful diagnostic step. Grab a laptop, plug it directly into your modem with an Ethernet cable (bypassing your router entirely), and run a speed test at fast.com.
- If the speed test fails or shows near-zero speeds: the problem is between the modem and the street — call your ISP.
- If the speed test shows your normal speeds: your internet is fine. The problem is inside your network — the router, a switch, your Wi-Fi setup, or configuration. That’s an IT call, not an ISP call.
This one test tells you exactly which side of the modem the problem is on.
Step 6: Check if it’s a specific service or all internet
Sometimes what feels like a full internet outage is actually one service being down. If Microsoft 365 won’t connect but a Google search works fine, that’s a Microsoft issue, not your internet. If Teams is down but email loads, check Downdetector for Microsoft 365 status before you start troubleshooting your network.
Step 7: Check for bandwidth saturation
If your internet is slow but not fully down, check what’s running. A scheduled cloud backup, a large file transfer, or Windows Update running across multiple computers simultaneously can saturate a business connection completely. Log into your router and look at connected devices and traffic. If something is consuming the pipe, pause it and see if things improve immediately.
When you do call the ISP
Have this ready before you call: your account number, the address of the affected location, and the result of your modem speed test. Tell them exactly what you’ve already tried — checked the outage page, restarted modem and router, ran a wired speed test that showed the problem. This skips the first 15 minutes of scripted troubleshooting and gets you to an actual resolution faster.
The longer-term fix: don’t let one outage stop everything
If your whole business goes dark every time the internet goes down, that’s worth addressing before the next outage. A 4G/LTE failover device — a small unit that automatically switches to a cellular connection when your main line drops — keeps critical operations running for most short outages. For businesses that can’t operate at all without an internet connection, a second ISP on a separate line (Rogers and TELUS on separate circuits, for instance) is the more robust solution.
It’s not a complicated fix. It just needs to be set up before you need it.
Internet outages are just one of the common calls we get — printers, Wi-Fi, and slow computers round out the list. Our common IT problems page has quick checklists for all four, so you can try them yourself before you call anyone, us included.
If you’d like a hand figuring out where your connectivity is fragile and what would make it more resilient, our team is happy to take a look.
