Cause 1: Your WiFi
A frequent cause of an Internet problem is not your Internet connection, but your WLAN. This often causes problems, breaks off and no longer lets any data through. What you can do in this case and how you can fix the problems yourself, we have put together in a guide on the subject of WLAN interference.
Cause 2: The DNS server
But sometimes there are other reasons why your line from 1&1, Telekom, Vodafone, O2 or another provider no longer works as it should. For example, sometimes your provider's DNS server may stop responding. This DNS server is something like directory inquiries. If you enter www.inside-digital.de in your browser, your computer or mobile phone will ask the DNS server via your router. This is stored in your router and usually comes from your provider.
But sometimes these servers are disrupted or fail completely. You can then no longer access pages that you have not visited for a long time. Others may still be reachable through a local cache.
In most routers you can change the DNS server. Both Google and the Internet giant Cloudflare offer free DNS servers that you can enter in your router. For IPv4 the addresses are 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1 – you can call the IPv6 server with 2606:4700:4700::64 and 2001:4860:4860::8888. You will usually find the corresponding access data where you store your dial-in data. With routers supplied by the provider and with their own software, it is sometimes not possible to change the DNS server.
Cause 3: The line
If your WLAN is working and the DNS server is also doing its job, you may not have a connection to your provider at all. You can usually see this on the router or modem by a control light that suddenly no longer lights up.
If that's the case, there are two possibilities: There is a major disruption at your provider that is affecting many customers. Or maybe it's a local problem. This can be caused, for example, by a defective line in your house. Especially with cable providers, it can also be the case that the amplifier point in the basement may no longer have power. And if the legendary excavator has struck near your apartment, your line will look bad for the next few hours.
Cause 4: The Internet
If you basically have a connection to the Internet, only many pages are not accessible, it can also be a disruption in the Internet that is causing you problems. What many people don't know is that what used to be a decentralized Internet has long since become a network that relies on just a few providers for the technical structure. These so-called CDN networks (CDN = Content Delivery Network) are, to put it simply, something like a cache of certain pages that is distributed worldwide. For example, you are not calling up the amazon.de site from a server in the USA or in Frankfurt am Main, but probably from a server very close to you. This saves data traffic and makes the Internet faster.
Other IT giants such as Meta (Facebook & Co) or Google also operate such intelligent networks and make them available to other companies. Other companies such as Cloudflare or Fastly also offer corresponding services. The problem: If one of these CDN providers has a technical problem, it can quickly affect tens of thousands of websites. You can't change anything here either. Most of the time, however, the faults are rectified after minutes, more rarely a few hours.
Read on now
No WLAN! What to do if the internet doesn't work?
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