We have all experienced a power outage at some point. It can be a general failure in the city where we live, a work being done in our neighborhood and the supply is cut off in a timely manner, a failure in our home… Sometimes it is a scheduled cut and other times, on the other hand, it catches us by surprise. But in this article we are going to focus on our topic of networks and routers. what happens to the router when power goes out in your house? We are going to explain something that you may have noticed.
When the light returns, your Wi-Fi slows down
if you have a point cut, of just a few seconds or a couple of minutes, surely you do not give it much importance. You see that the router connects automatically and your mobile or PC has a connection again. Now, have you stopped to do a speed test? If you do, you will see that it goes slower.
But why does this happen? The reason is none other than the use of the different Wi-Fi bands. You can connect to the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz frequency. The latter is the fastest and ideal when you connect near the router and want maximum speed. The former is better when you connect further away, as it is less sensitive to range.
What happens is that the 5 GHz band takes longer to connect when you turn on the router. This causes your computer or mobile to automatically connect to the 2.4 GHz frequency, unless you have it configured so that it does not. In this way, if you do a speed test as soon as you turn on the router after a cut, you will notice that the speed is lower.
Don’t worry, because that does not mean there is a problem with your connection from Internet. The reason is simply the one we discussed, that the 2.4 GHz frequency is activated first and your devices connect to it instead of the 5 GHz one. Once the 5 GHz band is available, you can connect them No problem.
Your router is not affected by power outages
If a computer, server, or external hard drive is shut down suddenly, they can experience problems. We can lose files or even have problems at the hardware level. But that is not the case of the router. It is a device that is designed to remain connected for weeks, but it will not be damaged by a power outage.
Keep in mind that even turn off the router once in a while it can be good. After all, it is a device such as a mobile phone or computer, so it will store information to respond to connection requests. Sometimes it can become saturated, so it is convenient to restart it. However, this is something that happens especially in older devices and not so much in newer ones.
In short, as it is in the event that the power goes out at home, it can mean that the Internet connection goes down when you connect via Wi-Fi momentarily. This is since connects to the 2.4 GHz band before 5 GHz. You can always choose which Wi-Fi band to connect devices to.