When you connect wirelessly, there are actually two connections involved.

The first is the connection between your computer and your wireless router. The second connection is between your computer and your internet service provider.

Both of these connections have to be working, and just because you can connect to your router doesn't mean you'll be able to connect to the internet. Here are a few tips to help you figure out what's going on.

1) Call the internet service provider: You can have a very strong signal between your computer and the wireless router, but if there is a problem with the internet, such as a broken cable in another part of the world, that "excellent" connection means nothing.

2) Make sure the connection is yours: If you use various wireless connections, your computer stores the name of those on the system. Later on if your computer sees another network with the same name, it may automatically connect to it. You may be unknowingly using a connection that has the internet turned off.

3) Establish a hard connection: Sometimes the best way is to plug into the router with an Ethernet cable. If you still can't connect, it means the internet is down.

4)Turn everything off and on: It's the oldest way of fixing a problem, but it still works. Sometimes it's hard to figure out where the problem is, but a restart of both the router and your computer will sometimes fix the problem.

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