Before you spend an afternoon on hold, work through this page top to bottom. The steps go from most likely and least disruptive to least likely, so you don't start rewiring your office over what turns out to be a router that needed a restart. If you get to the end and you're still offline, that's genuinely when to pick up the phone - and by then you'll be able to tell us exactly what you've tried.
Common causes of an NBN dropout
When an nbn™ connection stops working, it's almost always one of these five. Knowing which one you're looking at saves a lot of guesswork.
Power or router problem
The most common one, and the easiest to miss. A router that has quietly crashed, dropped its Wi-Fi, lost power at the wall, or hasn't been restarted in months will look 'on' but pass no traffic. Kids, cleaners and power boards get bumped more often than you'd think.
An area outage
Sometimes it genuinely isn't your gear. Planned maintenance, a storm, a fault at the local node or a cut fibre in the street will take a whole area offline at once. If a neighbour on the nbn™ is also down, that's your answer.
Cabling to the premises
The wall socket, the lead-in from the street, or the cabling between the nbn™ connection box and your router. A half-seated plug, a chewed cable or a socket that was never wired to the active port will stop a connection that worked yesterday.
Network congestion
Not a full outage, but everything feels slow at 8pm. This is contention on the network during peak hours. It looks like a fault but usually clears - and it's why speeds are quoted as typical, not guaranteed, and depend on your equipment and network load.
A plan or account issue
An unpaid invoice, a plan change still provisioning, a service that was suspended, or a churn from another provider that hasn't finished. The line is fine - the account just isn't letting traffic through yet.
Fix it yourself: four steps, in order
Do these in sequence. Plenty of connections come back to life somewhere in the first two steps, so don't skip ahead.
Check the lights on your router
Look at the front of the router before you touch anything. A steady internet/WAN or DSL light (often green or blue) usually means the connection is up and the problem is Wi-Fi or a single device. A red light, a flashing light that never goes steady, or that light being off altogether points at the line or the nbn™ box. Note which lights are on - it's the first thing we'll ask.
Restart the router AND the nbn™ connection box
Power both off at the wall - the router and the separate nbn™ connection box (the small white unit fitted at installation). Leave them off for a full 60 seconds, then power the nbn™ box on first and wait about two minutes for its lights to settle before switching the router back on. Give the whole thing five minutes to reconnect. A proper power-cycle clears the majority of overnight dropouts.
Check for an outage
If a restart doesn't bring it back, rule out an area fault before you keep pulling cables. Check your phone on mobile data (not the down Wi-Fi), ask a neighbour if they're offline too, and look for any planned-maintenance or fault notice. If the whole street is down, no amount of restarting at your end will fix it - but we can confirm the fault and chase it for you.
Check the cables are seated
Firmly re-seat every plug: power to both units, the lead from the nbn™ connection box to the router's WAN/internet port, and the lead from the wall socket. Push each connector until it clicks. Make sure the router cable is in the internet/WAN port, not a spare LAN port, and look for any cable that's been bent, crushed by furniture or nibbled by a pet.
One honest caveat about speed
If your connection works but feels slow rather than dead, that's a different problem to a dropout. nbn™ speeds are typical speeds, not guaranteed, and real-world performance depends on your plan, the cabling to the premises, your on-site equipment and how busy the network is at the time. A slow evening is often congestion; a slow all-day connection is worth a call.
When to call us
If you've power-cycled the router and the nbn™ connection box, ruled out an area outage and re-seated every cable and you're still down, it's time to stop poking at it. Call us straight away if:
- The nbn™ connection box shows a red or off status light, or lights that never settle.
- Your neighbours are online but you're not, so it isn't an area outage.
- The connection drops out repeatedly through the day, even after a full restart.
- A wall socket, lead-in cable or the cabling to your premises looks damaged.
- You've recently switched providers or changed plans and it never came back.
We're a local Penrith team and we sort connections in person across Western Sydney and the Blue Mountains - as well as the Hawkesbury, the Hills and greater Sydney. When you call, you reach people who know the network, not an interstate call centre reading a script. We'll confirm whether it's an outage, a line fault or your gear, chase the carrier on your behalf where it's their problem, and get you back online. If you're setting up a new connection or moving premises, we'll match you to the right plan and configure the router on site so it works from day one.