On occasion, you might experience disconnects, internet slowdowns, and/or lock ups. After verifying that the issue is not occurring at a server level, please consider the following options when troubleshooting your issues. Below is our list of a few things that could be causing your lockups and what you can do to try to resolve them.

1. 1st and foremost – power-cycle your router. This is the most common issue and solution. Just like your computer, routers need to be powered off and given a rest periodically. Find your internet router and unplug it from it’s power source. Leave it unplugged for at least 60 seconds. Then plug it back in. It will take a few minutes for it to power back up and reconnect to the internet. We generally recommend doing this afterhours since it brings all users down for about 5 minutes.

2. MiFi – We highly recommend having a backup MiFi or personal hotspot to use in cases of connection issues. This way, you can switch over from your normal network to your backup and minimize downtime. Additionally, we recommend you obtain your MiFi/personal hotspot from a different ISP than your normal network. Otherwise, when one goes down, the other will not work. For example, if your internet provider is Comcast, you would want to look at Verizon or AT&T for your MiFi.

3. Change your WiFi password – even if you aren’t sharing it with your customers knowingly, it is possible your employees are sharing it or simply using it themselves and that you bandwidth is getting saturated. If you have customers or employees streaming Netflix and Pandora, it will affect your connection. We had a wholesaler in Maryland who was having connection issues for months. In the process of switching out their router to a different model, their hardware person discovered their WiFi was actually the culprit because of all the people using it at once. They changed their WiFi password and the problem disappeared immediately and has not returned.

4. Change your router – your router could be going bad. Your Internet Service Provider should be able to test that if your purchased/rent through them. Otherwise, your hardware person should be able to help you out.

5. Call or change your internet provider – explain that you must have a constant signal because you run your business with cloud-based software. While regular websites will function normally with an average internet connection because their images, etc are cached (stored on your computer), HITS BPOS is not a website and does not operate nor handle the same as a website. When you access your data on our server, you are accessing an actual software program, not just forms on a website.

6. Where is your router and/or computer located? If your router is in an enclosed space, like a closet or under a desk, it may be getting too warm as there is generally no circulation. You can always plug in a fan to keep things cool and your equipment up and running.

7. Call your hardware person – You may have a hardware failure somewhere (bad network card or cable) that they should be able to test and find.

More information about our customer in Maryland who suffered for several months with the same issue: At the time, this customer was a 6-location account (1 of the 6 being a wholesale warehouse doing 200 tickets/day). We worked for more than 2 months with this customer, attempting to find anything in the program that might be causing a problem. We even re-wrote a couple of modules that we thought might be suspect. Nothing kept them from locking up and freezing up DAILY, but it was only happening at the warehouse. The 5-retail stores ran fine.

As part of this client’s effort to eliminate all variables, he even upgraded his Internet speed (cable modem) at the warehouse to 100Mbps, the very fastest possible in his area. Still… they were getting lockups and freezes daily.

Finally, we got to speak directly with his Internet person. As a result, he (the Internet person) offered to change out their router to a different model. In the process of doing that, he discovered that their bandwidth was being saturated via the WiFi access on his modem.

As it turns out, an employee had shared their WiFi password. The Internet service person disabled their WiFi, and the lockups and freezes of BPOS stopped immediately… and have not returned. The Internet person concluded that the available bandwidth had gotten so low at times, that BPOS would “lose connection”, which would cause it to hang. They have since re-activated the WiFi, but maintain tighter control over the access and limit the amount of total bandwidth available via WiFi.

(As a side note, this saturation condition would not typically show up when accessing “web” sites like ATD, TCi, etc., which do not need constant connectivity. That is because web sites like ATD, TCi, etc. are fetching relatively small “pages”, whereas BPOS is constantly retrieving and pushing a lot of data (invoices, inventory, customers, etc.).

We hope this information is helpful. If you have any questions, please let us know.