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No Internet during Power Outage

Grumpy3
I've been around

Hi,

I have UPS for my router - white Hitron router. During the power outage, the green light blinking rapidly.  I called tech support, customer concern then routed back to tech support.  They said they can't do anything. The hub in my neighbourhood has no back up power.  Can someone tell me where to complain to get it fix (installed)?  Nowaday, everyone is working/learning from home, internet is extremely important. 

Thanks, 

Grumpy3

 

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6 REPLIES 6

Re: No Internet during Power Outage

57
Resident Expert
Resident Expert

You may complain all you like, however the battery backups in many nodes are either no longer in place or not working due to age. This has been discussed in many threads regarding Rogers Home Phone as well, which also now goes down in the event of a power failure (on Rogers and Bell, etc, ).  Service providers have decided that it's simply too expensive to replace back-up batteries on all their nodes.

 

Home Phone is no longer considered "essential" because most people have a cell phone for backup. Although it would be nice to have Internet available 100% of the time, it's not going to happen. Most people don't even bother with UPS since Home Phone, Internet and Cable TV (IPTV, etc) now "go down" in the event of a local power failure.

 

I do recommend UPS for desktop computers and for PVRs that do recordings locally. IgniteTV is in the cloud and is not affected by local power failures.

Re: No Internet during Power Outage

suezuki650
I'm here a lot

It's been two years since this was posted so I'd like to see if there was an update.  I purchased a UPS specifically for my modem and router so that devices, like my laptop, would have internet in the case of a power fail.  Unfortunately I discovered that not only did we lose power, but we lost internet connectivity as well.  We have fiber to the home.

Re: No Internet during Power Outage

@suezuki650 there are a couple of points where a power failure could result in a loss of internet connectivity.  

 

As far as I know, Rogers is currently using two versions of fibre installations.  

 

1.  The first is Radio Frequency over Glass.  That is a fibre installation which literally replaces the traditional copper cabling in a neighbourhood.  That has been around for a few years now.  It requires a Fibre Optical node in your home, and it requires power to run the node.  That node essentially translates the optical data into electrical data to feed a modem via RG6 cable.  One glance at your modem should tell you if the modem is fed via traditional RG6 cable or an ethernet cable.  

 

2.  The second is a modern fibre optical system which terminates in a Nokia XS-020X-A ONT (Optical Network Terminal) which in turn feeds a modem.  This has been implemented over the past few months in selected areas.  This feeds a modem or router via ethernet cable.

 

In both cases, the Optical Network Terminal requires power to operate.  So, if the terminal is not located near the modem and router, you would require a second UPS to power the terminal.  The optical terminals can be seen in the following DSLReports link:

 

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r33232305-

 

The top terminal is the RFoG terminal.  From the posts that I've seen, for some reason, these have been installed in the garage or possibly in the basement.  This terminal feeds a traditional modem via RG6 cable.  The bottom terminal is the newer terminal that Rogers appears to be using with the newer passive optical networks that Rogers is installing in some locations.  In this case, the Nokia ONT is connected via ethernet cable to a modem, or directly to a router, bypassing any requirement for a modem.  This would be my choice, if I had one.  This terminal has a 1 Gb/sec ethernet port and a 10 Gb/s ethernet port, either of which can be used.  Once again, in both cases, these terminals, wherever they are located in the home would require a UPS to keep operating in the event that the power fails.  

 

The two types of installations also require different upstream installations.  The RFoG installation is connected to the neighbourhood node which requires a backup battery in order to operate during a power outage.  In many cases these batteries are either in poor shape, or they've been stolen from the neighbourhood node and not replaced.  I don't know what Rogers policy is regarding upkeep of these batteries.  If you have this type of installation, with the Optical Network Terminal, modem and router all running off of a UPS, and you still end up with an internet failure during a power outage, that would indicate that the neighbouhood node battery is unserviceable or missing.  That would require a call to tech support to remind Rogers to inspect/replace/install a backup battery in the neighbourhood node.

 

From what I understand, the second Nokia Optical Terminal is a fed through a passive optical network, which usually relies on passive optical splitters to feed customers running on this type of system.  So that is a single optical feed inbound from the CMTS, and multiple feeds outbound to the customers connected to that particular CMTS optical feed.  Don't quote me on this one, but I believe this is all passive and doesn't require any power to operate any midstream equipment such as the neighbourhood node.   So, although I don't believe this requires any power to operate in the event of a power outage, only tech support or the Rogers engineering staff would be able to confirm that.  

 

So, a long answer to the question.  To really answer that question, you would have to determine what type of optical network you are running on.  That can easily be determined by locating the optical network terminal and looking at whether or not you can run that terminal off of your existing UPS.  If the terminal is located in the garage or basement you would probably have to buy a second UPS, and even then, with an RFoG installation, you would need to know if the neighbourhood node has a backup battery that it can use in the event of a power failure.  Tech support should be able to tell you that as it should require nothing more than a glance at the operating status for the neighbourhood node. 

 

 

Re: No Internet during Power Outage

Fernbab
I've been around
Most people have cell phones yes but the last 3 major ice storms in NB Rogers had not internet, or network service on cell phones so in case of emergency that we had no way of calling or texting could not even do a emergency call.. when you have all your services with Roger’s and they don’t even have the courtesy to do a announcement to give the clients a explanation on why this happened. But yet they think that it’s not worth the expense to change the batteries well then fix the problem with the network so our cell phones work,

Re: No Internet during Power Outage

Loss of cell phone service is similar to the lack of batteries in the neighbourhood, or stolen or un-maintained batteries in the neighbourhood nodes.  Cell phone towers and their network backbone would require backup batteries or standby power generators.  With many of these towers located in residential areas, using residential power networks, the probability Rogers installing backup power for these towers is slim to none.  

 

In a power out situation, removing the sim card from the phone will allow the phone to use any available cell tower, no matter what company that tower belongs to.  

 

In Samsung phones, under Settings .... Safety and emergency, there is an Emergency mode which can be enabled.  According to the Samsung note on the page, "You'll be able to use Messages, Contacts, and Emergency Calls, but other apps and functions will be restricted."

 

I don't know if that has the effect as removing the sim card to access any local cell tower. 

Re: No Internet during Power Outage

dvautour
I've been here awhile

It's also worth noting that newer cell phones have satellite backup for emergencies when there are no active cell towers to route a 911 call.

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