What the lights on your router are telling you
Across almost every make, the pattern is the same: a steady light is good, a flashing light means something is in progress, and red or orange means it has stopped. What differs is which colour means "working".
The general grammar of router lights
Manufacturers do not agree on colours, but they do agree on behaviour, and the behaviour is usually more informative than the colour.
| What it is doing | What that generally means |
|---|---|
| Steady | A settled state. Usually good, but check the colour: a steady red is a settled fault. |
| Slowly flashing | Something is in progress — connecting, negotiating with the exchange, or applying an update. Give it a few minutes before treating it as broken. |
| Rapidly flashing | Either data moving, or a state you triggered such as a factory reset. On most makes the rapid flash is the confirmation that a reset has taken. |
| Off | No power to that function. On a light that should be on, this is a fault; on a port light it just means nothing is plugged in. |
The one distinction worth learning
If your connection comes in over fibre, you probably have two boxes: a small unit on the wall from the network operator, and your own router plugged into it. Their lights answer different questions, and reading the wrong one wastes hours.
The wall unit tells you whether the line into your property is working. If it is showing a fault, nothing you do to your router will help — the problem is outside your house and needs reporting. Your router's lights only tell you about your own network. Always read the wall unit first.
A line fault is out of your hands and can take days to clear. If the connection is one a business depends on, that is the gap 4G and 5G business broadband is meant to cover, and it is worth arranging before you need it rather than during an outage.
Look up your exact model
Generalities only get you so far, because a colour that means "fine" on one make means "no internet" on another. Every model page we publish lists that model's documented light meanings.
Models with a documented light table
- Cisco RV34023 documented light states
- TP-Link Archer VR210020 documented light states
- Zyxel USG Flex 10020 documented light states
- Cradlepoint E10019 documented light states
- Teltonika RUT24019 documented light states
- Vodafone Ultra Hub19 documented light states
- FortiGate 60F18 documented light states
- Ruckus R55018 documented light states
- Teltonika RUTX5018 documented light states
- Cisco ISR 110017 documented light states
- Sophos XGS 8717 documented light states
- TP-Link Archer AX7317 documented light states
