IT ISSUE · NETWORKS AND CONNECTIVITY
Remote worker cannot connect
The same problems with a longer list of suspects, most of them in a house we have never seen.Remote problems are the same problems with a longer list of suspects, most of which sit in a house we have never seen. The quickest way through is usually not diagnosis at all: it is establishing what still works, because that removes most of the list in a minute.
Quick questions that narrow it
- Does anything else in the house work normally?
- Does it work on a phone hotspot instead of home internet?
- Does it fail on the web as well as in the applications?
- Did it work yesterday, and what changed since?
- Is anyone else in the business affected?
Narrow from the outside in
We work from what is known good towards what isn't: their internet, their device, their account, then whatever they are trying to reach.
Some of that chain is genuinely beyond us. We can't see their router, their neighbours' wireless, how far they're sitting from it or what a housemate is downloading. Where the evidence points into the house, we'll say so and tell you what to try rather than pretending a remote session can see it. That is usually less satisfying than a fix and it is more honest than an hour of looking busy.