The KPUD fiber network, Net253 servers, and transit out of county must be operational for your internet to work.
The most likely reason you are offline:
Power outage (your equipment, your home, your neighborhood, or somewhere nearby)
Router needs a reboot
Network cabling got incorrectly reconfigured
The KPUD fiber modem on the outside of your home has lost power
Cloud service provider outages (Google/Amazon/AWS/Microsoft/Apple/Facebook/Zoom/etc)
A power issue at your home is the most common reason. Common as in 8 out of 10 calls for help are this issue.
1a) A PSE power outage in your area is taking down KPUD equipment or your home.
KPUD has battery backup on all their nodes in the field, but in extended outages they run out of energy.
Use the myPSE app or PSE.com website to look for power outages in your area. If there is a big red blotch near your home and your internet is out, wait for the power to be restored. Then proceed with troubleshooting if the internet doesn’t come back on in 5 minutes.
Here is a common cause of extended outages: PSE power failure, homeowner wiggles/moves wires, PSE comes back up, but the configuration is broken until a service call is performed.
1b) The white power adapter for the KPUD gray box.
Make sure the “blue light of happiness” is on. If the light is off, locate the GFCI or circuit breaker that has tripped, and correct the issue.
To power cycle the gray box, press the reset button on the wall wart till the blue light fades out, then release.
The gray box takes 3 minutes to reboot and re-attach to the KPUD network
Do not unplug the white power adapter unless you have to reset a GFCI under it.
1c) The wires on the bottom of the white power adapter are loose.
If you unplug the power adapter from the AC outlet, you will most likely dislodge the green terminal block on the bottom.
Make sure this terminal block is firmly inserted, it should not move when properly inserted.
I describe this green terminal block thusly: “Its only purpose in life is to work its way loose and frustrate you…”
Router problems are the second most common reason your internet stops working.
2a) Your router has it’s WiFi turned off.
Netgear Nighthawks have a button to turn off/on the wifi. If you have a cat, this is likely what happened.
2b) Your WiFi router is out to lunch.
It happens eventually to every router make we have seen, from the cheapest to the most expensive.
Power cycle your router by unplugging the power cord (not the network cord) and then plugging it back in.
Never push a factory reset button or any “reset” button. Just pull the power cord.
If you reset the router you will have to follow the technical steps to log back in and setup your WiFi again.
2c) Your router manufacturer has updated the firmware on your router with a version that doesn’t work well.
This happens to all routers, we haven’t found a brand yet that hasn’t had this happen.
We have seen this on Google WiFi, Google Nest, Nighthawks, Orbi, Unifi, Amplifi, MikroTik, TP-Link.
Usually, a power cycle clears the problem and you limp along until they push a fix. It stinks, but not staying current isn’t an option with high performance broadband and aggressive nation states like China, India, and Russia.
Less likely, but happens more that we like, someone jiggled the configuration of the networking cords and plugged all your home networking gear directly to the internet, and disconnected the router. All the devices in your home network must travel through the router to share a single global network address. With misconfigured cabling, you will get either no internet at all or very oddly behaving internet (sometimes some device works, then sometimes another, but never all at the same time working)
3a) The network cable is unplugged or mis-plugged
Your router may have multiple network cords on the back. You may have a network “Switch”
There can be only one connection from the KPUD gray box to the router. Make sure you do not have a network switch between your router and the gray box. If you do, remove it, and power cycling the gray box to unlock the internet.
You have 2 types of network connections to your router, the world area network (WAN), normally a yellow jack on the wall or a yellow cable is used to indicate the cable/port is world internet. Your home itself has a local area network (LAN). Your LAN cannot be directly connected to the WAN. Think Ghostbusters; this is crossing the streams and the marshmallow man explodes. Don’t do it, even if you are a computer science expert and think you know what your doing. Your LAN can have many connections throughout your home and even outbuildings/ADUs.
4) Something broke the fiber between the gray box and where your home connects to the KPUD community node.
Tree fell on the lines, car hit a power pole, someone cut trench through your fiber. We will contact KPUD for you.
KPUD works residential repairs Monday thru Thursday 10 hours per day. If there is an outage that takes down many customers (like a block, or neighborhood), they will likely respond any day of the week.