Free tool ยท Internet dropouts
Why does my internet keep dropping out?
Start with what your connection is actually doing, or with the lights on the box, and work down to a real cause. This covers all five nbn technologies, tells you what you can genuinely fix yourself, and gives you the words to use with your provider so the call does not end at have you tried restarting your router.
Last reviewed: 15 August 2026 · by Alien IT Solutions
Start with what you can see
There are two ways in. Pick the one that matches what you actually know. If you know the pattern, start with the symptom. If you are standing in front of the box wondering what the red light means, start with the lights.
Every branch below is a real page you can link, bookmark or send to someone. Nothing here is hidden behind a script, and nothing needs you to fill in a form or hand over an email address.
Way in 1. What is it doing?
- The internet drops out at the same time every dayIs it predictable, for example most evenings, or always around the same hour?
- The internet drops out when it rainsDoes it get worse in rain, or in the day or two after rain?
- Wi-Fi keeps dropping out but a cabled device is fineDoes a device plugged in with a cable stay connected while wireless devices drop?
- The internet drops out then comes back on its ownDoes it come back without you touching anything, after seconds or minutes?
- The internet drops out every few minutesIs it constant, several times an hour, all day?
- The internet has been dead since a particular dayDid it stop on a particular day and never come back?
- The internet is slow but never actually drops outDoes it stay connected but run far below what you pay for?
Way in 2. What do the lights say?
The thing that decides everything: is it your Wi-Fi, or is it the line?
Almost every wasted hour on this problem comes from skipping this one test. Wi-Fi problems and connection problems feel identical from the sofa, and they have completely different owners. Yours, and theirs.
Plug a computer directly into the router with an Ethernet cable and turn that computer's Wi-Fi off. Leave it that way through the next few dropouts. If the wired machine keeps working while the wireless ones drop, the fault is your Wi-Fi and your provider cannot fix it. If the wired machine drops too, it is the connection, and you now have the single piece of evidence that gets you past the first level of their script.
What changed in July 2026, and why most advice you will read is now wrong
You will read everywhere that evening slowdowns are caused by your provider buying too little CVC, the wholesale capacity charge nbn used to bill per megabit. That advice is now out of date. nbn's own pricing roadmap sets the CVC price to $0 from 1 July 2026 for every nbn network except the satellite network, and converted the bundled offers to flat rate. There is no longer a per megabit wholesale meter for your provider to skimp on for a fixed line or fixed wireless service. If your connection still slows every evening, the cause sits somewhere else, and it is usually your provider's own capacity, a shared segment in your street, or something on a timer in your house.
The one exception is Sky Muster satellite, which the roadmap explicitly carves out. On satellite, wholesale capacity is still charged, and peak contention remains a real explanation.
Before you touch anything
- Do not go up a ladder or onto a roof. That includes fixed wireless antennas and dishes. nbn's own fixed wireless guide tells you to contact your provider rather than touch an outdoor unit mounted more than 2 metres off the ground. There is nothing you can fix up there that is worth a fall.
- Do not open the nbn connection box, and do not touch the pit or the lead-in cable. That equipment belongs to nbn, not to you or your provider. Fibre terminations carry laser light that you cannot see and should not look into. Opening it can also end your service and leave you liable for the repair.
- Leave the backup battery alone beyond what your provider's own script tells you. If you have the optional Power Supply with Battery Backup, follow your provider's instructions for it and nothing more.
- Burning smell, scorch marks, or a modem too hot to touch: stop. Switch it off at the wall, unplug it, and do not plug it back in. Tell your provider it needs replacing. There is no troubleshooting step that comes before this.
Is it actually an outage?
Before you diagnose anything, it is worth ruling out a fault that is already known and already being worked on. Every carrier in Australia has to publish its resolved outages, and we join those registers into one place.
Check the cross carrier outage register, or if you are completely offline right now, this is who to call and what to say.
Where this comes from
Every light state and every figure on this page comes from the sources below, each checked on 15 August 2026. Where a provider's guide disagrees with nbn's, the provider is describing their own hardware and you should follow theirs.
While you are on the phone to them anyway
Most people only look hard at their telco account when something has gone wrong. Since you are already dealing with them, send the bill over. The audit is free, and we will tell you plainly where you are overpaying and what is worth challenging.
Get a free bill audit