Ziply Fiber Internet Not Working — Router & ONT Fixes

Applies to: Ziply Fiber, Pacific Northwest (WA, OR, ID, MT)

Worth knowing some background here: Ziply Fiber was formed in 2020 by acquiring Frontier Communications' old Northwest assets — so if you're a longtime customer, you may remember this as Frontier service. Ziply itself is currently being acquired by Bell Canada Enterprises, a deal expected to close in 2025, which may bring changes to the network over time.

1. Check the physical connections

1. Confirm the router's power cord is securely connected at both ends and plugged into a working wall outlet — not a power strip.
2. Try switching to a different Ethernet cable and port on the router if you're troubleshooting a wired connection.
3. Confirm the connection between your router and the ONT (Optical Network Terminal — often wall-mounted in a garage, closet, or outside) is secure.

2. Reboot your router

1. Unplug or power off the router.
2. Wait 30 seconds.
3. Turn it back on and give it a few minutes to fully reconnect.

3. Third-party router repeatedly rebooting itself after switching to fiber

This is a specific, real, documented pattern: some third-party routers (a TP-Link Archer C3150 is one confirmed case) start randomly dropping connection and rebooting every few minutes specifically after switching to Ziply's fiber service — something that wasn't a problem on a previous cable connection. The fix that resolved this was disabling "Smart Connect" under the router's wireless settings — a feature that automatically combines your 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks into one, which can behave unpredictably with fiber's higher bandwidth.

1. Log into your router's admin settings and find the WiFi/wireless section.
2. Disable "Smart Connect" or any similarly-named band-combining feature.
3. Give each band its own separate network name (SSID) — this also makes it easier to tell which band a device is actually using if you need to troubleshoot further.

4. General instability with a self-built or unusual router setup

If you're running anything with a lot of "smart" automatic features enabled — band steering, automatic QoS, mesh auto-optimization — and seeing unexplained instability, turning those features off one at a time narrows down the actual cause far more effectively than leaving everything on and guessing.

5. Multiple devices slow or losing signal at once

High-bandwidth activity — large uploads, 4K streaming, online gaming — can cause your router to redistribute available signal, temporarily reducing performance for other devices. If this lines up with someone starting a big upload or stream, pausing that activity and seeing if things improve confirms whether that's the actual cause.

6. Check for an outage

If there's no obvious local cause, check Ziply's outage status before further troubleshooting — a wider network issue in your area will look identical to a local equipment problem from your side.

FAQ