Or the unexplained happens and the little green light on the cable modem turns red. You are, as the sailors say when a ship’s engine goes dead, dead in the water. Now what? Most remote work relies on access to a reliable internet connection, and for many people, especially hourly or clock workers, no internet means no pay. That means finding a way to get back online quickly, whether at home or on the go work from home offline.

The goal, given the outage, is to stay in business, have a job, and have a reliable backup plan after the work from home offline and Internet outage swearing is spoken. It is for this reason that a bag with all the cables, equipment and even a sweater (for unregulated air conditioning) can quickly get you back up and running.

The easiest way to navigate a temporary outage is to connect from your smartphone. All modern smartphones have a Wi-Fi hotspot feature that allows you to share your data connection with other devices, though many phone plans limit its usefulness.

You can activate your hotspot in your phone’s settings menu. On an iPhone, find Personal Hotspot in the main Settings menu.

On Samsung phones, go to Settings > Connections > Mobile hotspot & connection, and on other Android phones, it’s often in Settings > Network & Internet > Hotspot & connection.

Change or copy the password, then connect your laptop to the phone’s Wi-Fi SSID and you should be in business.

Even “unlimited” phone plans will throttle your hotspot speed after a certain point. That point is usually separate from your overall high-speed data allotment and can range from around 5 GB per month to more than 40 GB.