Same Time of Day, Internet Does Down – Solutions & Tips from AT&T

Learn What May Be Causing Your Service to Drop

Have you noticed that your service seems to drop at a certain time of day? When this happens, our first thought might be, oh man, what is AT&T doing to my internet? The better question should be "which one of your devices is causing the internet to drop."

Service drops are not normal, but when they do happen, they are random. A few things can cause random drops and they can be caused by many factors including your:

• Home environment
• The AT&T signal to your home
• And even a single device. 

Time of Day Service Drops

So, let’s say you are streaming or working. Every day at 4:33p, your internet goes down. It is frustrating because you knew it was going to happen. You go to your modem, press the reset reboot button, and you're back online. After some time though, it can get frustrating seeing your internet drop at the same time. 

Here are a few examples of what caused service drops for other customers that were caused by things outside of AT&T’s control.

Programs on your Device/ A Single Device on your Network

A sound engineer contacted AT&T because his internet was going down. I ran tests, checked his modem environment, and even sent a tech out. Nothing seemed to resolve this. Per the advice of a peer, I asked the customer to test each device one at a time to see if the service interruptions continued. They didn’t. The sound engineer figured everything was ok again and connected all of his devices. Once again, service drops started to occur, usually in the evening. At this point, it was an experiment on his end. He decided to leave all devices running and remove them one at a time. Long story short, he noticed that when one of his computers was not online, his internet would run fine.

We chatted later about it and he told me that during the evening, one of his computers ran some type of software that bottlenecked his service and mimicked service drops. This was not an issue we could fix because it related to what his device was doing. 

What can you do? Test each device one at a time to see if drops occur. 

Large Appliances/ Hardware

Here is another story. In the evening, a customer would lose service regularly and didn't know why. We did everything mentioned above with the sound engineer but nothing would work. The customer finally told me that when she did laundry, services would drop. So of course, I asked, "what about when you are not doing laundry" and she stated that the service was fine. I sent a tech out to check the grounding of her outlets. The next day, I called the tech to chat and he told me the outlets were not grounded. Because of this, the customer's services would drop any time power was an issue. We told the customer the grounding in the home had to be resolved before we could troubleshoot further. AT&T is unable to perform this type of work and an electrician normally has to be contacted. 

What can you do? Move your modem away from an outlet that shares power with large appliances and get a surge protector rated for electronics. This may not resolve the issue but a good step to try. 

Power Strips Vs Surge Protectors 

We all use power strips or surge protectors to connect multiple devices to a single outlet. The downside about these strips and protectors, if one of your electronics has a short, like an old lamp or 30-year-old sound system, it may affect other devices on the surge protector or power strip. Unfortunately, this is not something AT&T can control but we may be able to help you find the best solution possible. 

As mentioned above, using a surge protector rated for electronics may resolve some issues. At the end of the day, power-related causes can normally be resolved by an electrician or removing devices you think are causing the trouble. 

ChrisZ, AT&T Community Specialist