💬 Restart the router first, it fixes more than you think

Every evening around 8 my father calls and says the internet is gone. Every single evening. He lives 2 hours away in a small house with a router behind the television. Last winter I spent a week assuming the worst. Wrong plan, bad wire, some neighbour stealing his wifi. I even called the provider on his behalf and sat through 25 minutes of hold music. The man from the provider came on a Sunday, looked at the router, and unplugged it. Counted to 10 on his fingers. Plugged it back in. Lights blinked. Internet came back. He said, sir, it was on for 5 months. No machine likes that. Then he left. I paid nothing. I've never felt so stupid for a visit that cost nothing. Now I do it first for everything. Slow video call, page won't load, payment app hanging. Pull the plug. Count to 10. Plug it back. It sorts itself out about 6 times out of 10. When it doesn't, then I check if other phones are working, and then I call the provider. But I don't start there anymore. I save myself a lot of hold music. I taught my father too. Wrote it on a sticky note and stuck it on the router. Restart first. Wait 10. Call me only after that. He called me the next evening anyway. I asked if he'd tried it. He said, yes, and also I wanted to talk. So I've stopped minding the calls. The sticky note is still there. It's curled at the edges.

The unplug and count to 10 on his fingers moment is so funny and so true. Ours also died every evening around 8, and I found it was because 3 devices in the house started big updates at the same time. Maybe check if the TV at your father's place is the one acting up. A smart TV downloading things at night killed our wifi for weeks.

I do a different first step. I open any website on my phone using mobile data and see if that loads.