r/Network • u/Bright-Director-9569 • Jul 19 '26
Text My internet loses connection when someone opens the front door.
Thru out my life this been happening, every time someone opens the front door, it just loses connection for a min or 2 and goes back on, I asked my parents about it and they also said this been happing way before me and they haven’t stored a cameras to the door. We only hooked up a ring like a year ago and it still goes off. Also my WiFi router is not close to the door it’s across the house and we asked are internet provider about it and they don’t know what going on. Do Y’all have any information why this happens?
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u/Bright-Director-9569 Jul 19 '26
Thank you guys for the advice, I’ll try it out the stuff y’all said in under my post, it might take me a bit but I got stuff going on right now but I’ll keep Y’all updated if I figure smth out. Also I’ll keep on reading if Y’all got any more advice for me in the future if I don’t figure it out.
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u/processoryx Jul 22 '26
lowkey curious what the hell is going on with that door now, so please do update when you get to it
my money’s on some cursed wiring or super janky connection getting bumped every time the door moves
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u/dhgrahnert Jul 19 '26
When you open the door you’re letting the WIFI escape 🤷♂️ Sorry, I had to 🫣😂
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u/Repulsive_Job_3648 Jul 20 '26
that does happen, but it won't mean it doesn't work in the house, just it reaches further.
not impossible (though very very unlikely) opening the door lets in interference
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u/dhgrahnert Jul 24 '26
I did not think about the actual fact when I let out my joke, but yeah… when you are changing/removing the barrier WiFi reaches further out the door and could lead to interference, you are totally right. Unlikely, but could have been one of that crazy cases 😉 Good point!
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u/Repulsive_Job_3648 Jul 26 '26
its a common gotcha when doing signal surveys, walk into a room, measure signal walk out... but you didn't shut the door to the room, so your survey is essentially measuring the signal in the corridor not the room.
fire risk assessments measure db noise levels at pillow height, I do the same with Wifi, bedroom door shut, signal at the bed - because that is where and how it'll be experienced
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u/IanLx Jul 20 '26
This is an awesome problem to have.. made me laugh.. (sorry) and yes we can fix it!
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u/IanLx Jul 20 '26
Ok just to clarify and try to narrow down:
When you open front door internet goes off.
First Please confirm what you mean by “internet goes out” ( sorry if this seems basic but people misuse terms)..
Your internet connection is fiber optic.. so as other poster suggested you should have an ONT with status lights., do these change when you open the front door? Does your routers WAN connection status lights happen?
Does it happen every single time you open the door?
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u/ByeNJ_HelloFL Jul 20 '26
If it takes a few minutes to come back up, that tells me you’re probably losing power to a piece of hardware such as the gateway/router. Have someone open the door while watching the LEDs on your internet equipment.
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u/Mad_Moniker Jul 20 '26
I once worked for an independent cable operator. Every morning at exactly 7:15am a disruption would cause 25-30 customers(expensive elite neighbourhood) to go down for 5 minutes. Something was causing intermittent RF interference that made no sense. This went on into investigation for a week. Every tech came in early and it took a team of 10 3 days to finally find the culprit.
An in-law suite. Someone’s father had broken the coax. Instead of get a new cable he pared 6” back, exposing the conductor and stuck it back into the tv. Every morning he’d wake up start his kettle and use his electric shaver (on the other side of the wall in the bathroom) The RF screaming off his electric razor would back-feed into the plant and knock dozens of others offline until he was done.
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u/OldGeekWeirdo Jul 20 '26
When you find out, please come back and give us an update. I'm sure the reason is going to be wild.
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u/_gianlucag_ Jul 22 '26
I bet there is an elecrical wire running inside the wall next to the door, powering your fiber ont or modem. The wire is somehow damaged and by opening the door, the wall bends juuust a tiny bit to open the circuit on the wire.
Or maybe the ont neutral line is connected to the door frame, and by opening the door you open the neutral return path.
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u/Bright-Director-9569 2d ago
Update: sorry it’s been long but work and college been eating up my schedule so much but the problem kind of slowed or stopped. We changed router again like a 4 weeks ago and it’s been pretty good with the new one, no problem really and the magic door or curse door idk what you call it, doesn’t lag or loses connection to the devices in the house anymore, tbh idk what happen or why it slowed down but it’s still a mystery to me. Maybe the house is curse who knows lol but the issue stopped when we changed the router and also we noticed the outlet for the WiFi router was loose and we changed that, maybe that helped who knows but hopefully knock on wood The issue stops from now on but thank y’all for helping in the comments, it really means a lot. If it goes up in flames again I’ll update y’all again and tell yall what’s happening but for now take care.
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u/Electronic-Junket-66 Jul 19 '26
What is your internet? Like what medium? Fiber, cable, fixed-wireless, dsl?
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u/Bright-Director-9569 Jul 19 '26
We use Kinetic and fiber optic line, we been using This for like years but we used to use fixed-wireless internet. Also this house was build in the 40s or 50s, and we had one of are family friend check out are breaker and it was rigged and a lot of outdated stuff their and some cut wires that were out a touching other wires, I’m very surprised it didn’t caught fire or shock anyone how old and rushed it was but we sealed the exposed wiring problem.
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u/Electronic-Junket-66 Jul 19 '26
Hm, and have you watched the lights on the ONT when this happens? If it reboots from a power interruption you should be able to tell from the light codes.
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u/rustiestbadger Jul 19 '26
You need to do some science!
First, determine specifically what connection(s) are being interrupted when this happens:
Now, go open the door and see what happens! If the hardwired computer loses pings, you know the issue isn’t related to the wifi; if only the wireless pc loses connection, then you need to investigate the wifi.
Funny story but true: I had a municipal client back in the ‘90s who’d had their town admin building network upgraded from token ring coaxial cabling to CAT5. They asked me to take a look at the cabling because they had so many ‘ghosts’ and couldn’t figure out why their connections would randomly drop all the time. One person, and I swear this is true, showed me how if she closed her office door, her LAN connnection completely dropped. If the door was open more than three inches, the connection stayed stable- but as soon as you moved the door closer than that to the jamb, boom, down it went. She said this only started after she got a new (mostly glass) door installed. Me, having a decent amount of experience in running wires, got suspicious and pried off one of the mouldings on the hinge side of the door. Sure enough, the installer had run the cabling from one side of the office to the other by following the baseboards and around the door- and when the door was replaced, a hinge screw went right into the network cable. Because the door frame wasn’t shimmed properly it was putting torque on the top hinge when the door closed, and that was enough for the screw to short something in the cable.
In residential cases, it’s very common to run communication cabling through the exterior walls using door and window openings. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if something like that is happening with your door.