Building a wireless network at home is quite easy particularly when you use the all-in-one modem router devices that function as modem, router, wireless access point and the switch. Technically you just need to connect the cable/ DSL modem port to the Cable / DSL line and one phone call to the ISP where you sign-up the Internet services, then your wireless network should go live. But sometimes it is not that simple, wireless network problem occasionally happen. Fortunately, you can usually do the wireless troubleshooting and solve here problems yourself.
Wireless troubleshooting in most cases is a matter of going through a series of steps to eliminate potential issues one by one before you finally find the problem as general includes three general steps, isolating your problem, troubleshooting the problem, and ,if necessary , contracting the right organization fpr support.
Isolating Networking Problem
Before you do the wireless troubleshooting, you need to localize or isolate what the underlying of the wireless network problem is. A typical home networking includes three layers - the internet, the modem / router, and the computers on your network. These three layers can be described as shown in the following figure.
you must first identify which network layer is causing the problem, before you can effectively troubleshoot a problem.
Although you can fix most problems yourself, knowing which layer is causing 
the network or wireless network problem will help you contract the right organization for support only if you can't fix the problem yourself.
Follow the steps below to identify which layer is causing the problem:
- Click Start ==> Control Panel ==> Click Network and Internet Connections
- Under Network and Internet connection ==> Click Network Connection
- Now you can examine the status of your network adapter under this Network Connections window with the following possibilities:
A> Connected status but cannot access the internet
Have a look at this status that applies both to the wired adapter and Wireless adapter.
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| Local Area connection connected status |
Wired or Wireless network problem with this symptom indicates that the computer is properly connected to the modem and router, or if you are using the wireless adapter your computer is connected properly to the wireless network. There must be an internet problem.
Wired /Wireless troubleshooting this kind of wired / wireless network problem can be done by following the steps below.
- Verify if you can't connect to the internet by opening your browser and attempt to connect some websites such as xp-twiks.blogspot.com or whatever. If you can find that some websites open successfully but certain websites fail, then you have no wired or wireless network problem. If you cannot open all the websites, then follow the next step.
- Unplug the modem and wait a minute, then plug it back again.
- Unplug the wireless router to the modem, if you have separate modem and wireless router. Wait a minute and then plug your modem back in again.
- Restart the computer. Try again with some websites and see if it is successful. If it is successful but the connection is significantly slow while the other computers ( if there are some computers on the network), you can suspect that there are some computers consulting too much of your Internet bandwidth or attempting to connect to too many computers. For your wireless troubleshooting, close the applications, or configure it to use less bandwidth or fewer connections or shutdown all other computers and make a test again as in step 1.
- If you have separate modem and wireless router, disconnect the wireless router and connect the computer directly to the modem. Restart the computer. if the computer is now connecting to the internet successfully, you have problem with the wireless router.
- If this last step is still no luck, then your modem is problem or your ISP is in problem.contact the ISP for support.
B> The NIC or the wireless adapter is disabled
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| disable state connection |
Wired or wireless network problem with this symptom is due to the NIC / wireless adapter in disable status. There must be someone or probably you have manually disabled the network adapter. You need to enable the adapter to fix it by right clicking the icon and select the Enable.
C> limited or no connectivity
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| Limited Connectivity Status |
This indicates limited or no connectivity. This is basically no problem with the computer, connection to the router - modem or wireless network is OK but the router is configured incorrectly, or there is a problem between your modem and the internet.
Limited or No Connectivity problem could be due to different problems, including a failed Internet connection, the router or the adapter is not configured correctly. Follow the steps below for wireless troubleshooting.
- Right click the adapter in the network Connections window, and then click Repair.
- Unplug your modem and wait a minute, and then plug your modem back in again.
- If you have a router connected to your modem, unplug it and wait a minute, and then plug the router back in again.
- Restart the computer.
- Up to this steps your adapter still shows "Limited or No Connectivity" ,make sure that the router has DHCP server feature enables. DHCP server provides the IP address automatically to the computer clients on the network. Restart the computer.
- If the modem and the wireless router are two separate devices, disconnect between the modem and the router and connect the computer directly to the modem. Restart the computer and see if it fixes the problem.
- If still no luck, connect your ISP for support. The "Limited or No Connectivity" error message indicates that your computer is properly connected to your home network; however, the ISP's DHCP server is not assigning it an IP address. This problem could be caused by a failer DHCP server on the ISP's network, a failed modem, or a problem with your Internet connection. Probably the ISP will provide a static IP address for you.
D>The Cable is Unplugged
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| Cable Unplugged Status |
This indicates that the cable is Unplugged, no connection to your modem or router.
- Check the network cable if it is unplugged.
- If the network cable is properly plugged into the port, try to swap into different port of the modem-router. Check the light indicator in the modem or router and see if the light is blinking on the corresponding port when you swap the cable to the port.
- If still no luck, replace the network cable with the good one.
- If still no luck, while the other computers that connect to the same modem / router are fine, then your computer NIC adapter is faulty. Replace the NIC adapter.
E> Wireless adapter cannot connect to the wireless network
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| No Connection to the wireless network |
This indicates that the computer cannot connect to the wireless network. There are two reasons that the adapter cannot connect to the wireless network, unable to make successful wireless connection or intermittent connectivity.
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