My Wi‑Fi suddenly stopped providing internet access to most of my devices. One Oppo phone still connects normally, but my Realme phone and PC do not. I've already tried changing DNS settings, forgetting and reconnecting to the network, and resetting network settings, but nothing has helped. What could cause only some devices to lose internet access, and how can I troubleshoot it?
3 Answers
This sounds like a DHCP issue. The router may not be assigning valid IP addresses to some devices, which would let them connect to Wi‑Fi but prevent them from reaching the internet.
Power-cycle the router completely: unplug it for about three minutes, reconnect it, and then give it another few minutes to restore the connection and assign addresses. If that doesn’t help, log in to the router’s administration page using its local address, commonly 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1. Check whether affected devices are paused or blocked, review the logs, and install a firmware update if one is available.
Since a PC is one of the affected devices, check whether it received a valid IP address. Run `ipconfig` in Command Prompt. An address beginning with 169.254 usually means DHCP failed. Then try `ping 8.8.8.8`: if that works, DNS may be the problem. Finally try `ping www.google.com`; if that succeeds too, the basic network connection and DNS are working.
I entered the router address in my browser, but the page just kept loading and never opened.