I only have one evening to troubleshoot this, and I don’t have spare networking gear. My connection drops while I’m streaming in the living room, and the router’s status light stays on. Do you actually use a wired test, the router logs, or an ISP line check to tell whether the router or ISP is the problem, and why?
Don’t start by rebooting everything, since that wipes out useful clues. Connect a laptop to the router with Ethernet, disable its Wi-Fi, and run an internet speed test while streaming. If Ethernet drops too, check the router log and modem/ONT lights at that exact time, then ask the ISP for a line check. If only Wi-Fi fails, the ISP is probably not the problem, even if the router’s status light stays on.
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The router light staying on only means it still has power, not that the internet link is healthy. During the next drop, check whether another device near the router still works on Wi-Fi; if it does, the problem is probably coverage or interference in the living room rather than the ISP.
The missing detail is whether your modem or gateway has its own connection lights and log. A router power/status light can stay normal through an ISP outage, so check the modem’s online light during the drop and note whether it starts blinking or goes out.
Yes, use a wired test if you can. Plug a laptop into a LAN port on the router, turn off that laptop’s Wi-Fi, and leave a stream or continuous ping running. If Ethernet stays solid while the living-room device drops, focus on Wi-Fi range, interference, or the streaming device. If Ethernet drops too, run Speedtest by Ookla after the connection returns and check the modem lights or event log. That points more toward the modem, incoming line, or ISP.
I would not connect directly to the modem unless necessary, since swapping devices may require a modem reboot and leaves the laptop exposed. For a one-evening diagnosis, testing wired through the router is faster and usually enough to separate Wi-Fi trouble from an upstream problem.
A speed test is the wrong primary test for a short, intermittent drop. It gives you one snapshot and may look perfectly normal once the connection recovers. Use the wired laptop, but run continuous pings instead so you can see which part of the path disappears at the same moment as the stream.
Open two command windows on the Ethernet-connected laptop. Ping your router’s LAN address in one, usually something like 192.168.1.1, and ping a public IP address such as 1.1.1.1 in the other. On Windows, add -t to keep each ping running. If you do not know the router address, run ipconfig and look for “Default Gateway.”
The results narrow it down more than the status light:
- Router ping fails: the router, Ethernet connection, or router LAN side is having trouble.
- Router ping continues but the public IP fails: the fault is beyond the LAN. That could be the router’s WAN side, modem/ONT, incoming line, or ISP.
- Both wired pings continue while the living-room stream stops: investigate Wi-Fi or the streaming device.
- Public IP works but websites and apps fail: try a hostname ping too, since that can expose a DNS problem.
Keep in mind that “Ethernet drops too” does not automatically convict the ISP. A router can remain powered, keep its light on, and still lock up or lose its WAN session. That is why the local router ping matters. It separates a router-wide freeze from a loss farther upstream.
I would place the laptop beside the router rather than trying to stretch Ethernet into the living room. Leave the normal streaming device where it usually sits and note the exact time it fails. If the wired test stays clean, check whether the stream improves when the living-room device temporarily uses the 2.4 GHz band instead of 5 GHz. It is slower, but often reaches farther and makes a useful one-evening comparison.
Save screenshots or copy the failed ping lines before rebooting anything. A repeatable period where the router responds but the public address does not gives the ISP something more specific than “streaming sometimes buffers,” while clean wired results keep you from wasting time on a line-service call.
Before you start any of this, sync the laptop clock and check what time your router log actually uses. Half the router logs I’ve seen run on their own clock or reset to some default after every reboot, so a ‘drop at 9:42’ in your notes matches nothing in the log. Two minutes fixing that up front saves you from a log full of timestamps that mean nothing.
The continuous ping idea from @deep_proxy899 is the right call, and I’d take it one step further so you’re not babysitting a screen all evening. On Windows you can pipe each ping to a file, something like ping -t 1.1.1.1 into a log, and let it run while you go about your night. Same for the gateway ping. When the stream hiccups, jot the wall-clock time, then match it against the timestamped lines later. Watching two black windows for three hours is how people give up early.
Where I’d push back a little: everyone here is assuming the drop reproduces on command. Intermittent stuff on a one-evening budget often just doesn’t cooperate. You might get one drop, or none, and then you’re stuck guessing. So I’d load the deck a bit. While you troubleshoot, deliberately hammer the connection with a big download or a second stream on another device. If the fault is load related or a marginal line, you’re more likely to trip it while your logs are running than if you sit quietly and wait.
One thing nobody’s said: the ‘drop’ might be the streaming app, not the network at all. Some apps buffer, lose the session, and throw an error while the actual connection was fine the whole time. If your wired pings stay clean through a living-room ‘drop,’ don’t just blame Wi-Fi range by default. Try the same title on a different app or a browser at the same spot. A single flaky app pretending to be a network outage wastes a lot of evenings.
Speedtest is fine for the after-the-fact snapshot once things recover, but treat it as a sanity check on your general speed, not proof of anything about the drop itself. By the time it runs, the intermittent fault is usually gone. The pings are your evidence. The speed number is just context for the ISP call if it comes to that.
Don’t factory-reset the router or start changing five Wi-Fi settings at once. That destroys the logs and leaves you with no idea which change mattered.
The wired test is still the quickest split, but I’d watch the router’s admin page at the same time. Look for separate values for router uptime and internet/WAN uptime. If the router uptime keeps counting but the WAN connection resets around the drop, the problem is somewhere between the router’s WAN port and the ISP. If the router uptime resets, suspect the router itself or its power adapter. Some routers do not show WAN uptime, but they may show a new WAN IP, a reconnect message, or DHCP/PPPoE events.
Since you only have an evening, avoid spending it chasing speed numbers. Keep the wired laptop connected, leave the living-room stream running normally, and write down the exact time of each failure. During a failure, check whether the wired laptop can open the router settings, reach the internet, and whether the modem or ONT connection light changes. That gives you a much cleaner answer than the router’s general status light.
If the wired side loses internet while the router itself remains reachable, call the ISP and ask them to check the modem or ONT’s disconnect history, signal levels, and WAN session resets. Don’t settle for “it looks online now.” They may be able to see repeated link drops even after service has recovered. If Ethernet never misses a beat, leave the ISP out of it for the moment and test the living-room device closer to the router or on the other Wi-Fi band. Clean Ethernet plus repeated streaming failures usually means the useful troubleshooting is inside the house, even if the app insists there is an “internet problem.”
A drop on every device is very different from a drop limited to the living-room streamer. Before blaming either the router or ISP, check whether that device is connecting through an extender or guest network, since a wired test at the main router will not catch problems there.
You probably won’t identify the exact failing box in one evening, but you can narrow the comparison. If the same streamer and app work normally through a phone hotspot in the living room while your wired laptop shows internet loss, the home connection path is the problem; if both connections fail, suspect the device or app instead.