wifi up time after blackout

[aussie1.1950]

I live in Thailand with an internet using 200mb fibre on True ID.
We often get blackouts, but only for about 5 seconds.
The router resets in about 2 minutes, but the server for the village takes about 20 minutes.
Is this too long?
I would expect only about 2 minutes for the server.
Any comments of other places?

Regards
Glyn

[tautech]

Welcome to the forum.

Yes it's way too long when in fact the ISP's network should be deemed as mission critical so should have some sort or UPS or battery backup.
If the backup supply has been neglected it's very possible its batteries are shagged and they need be informed of these totally unnecessary unprofessional service provision blackouts.

[Monkeh]

However, the reality is if they don't have sufficient monitoring in place to already be aware of this, they don't care anyway. Or they do.. and they still don't care.

[madires]

Since we don't know anything about your provider's infrastructure we can only guess. An OLT usually needs a few minutes for start-up and also some time for setting up the GPON. 20 minutes seem to be at the high side. UPSs and their maintenance aren't cheap. So most providers don't place any in outdoor distribution boxes or tiny sites. There's no real harm because the customers will be effected by the power outage too.

[fordem]

I live in Thailand with an internet using 200mb fibre on True ID.
We often get blackouts, but only for about 5 seconds.
The router resets in about 2 minutes, but the server for the village takes about 20 minutes.
Is this too long?
I would expect only about 2 minutes for the server.
Any comments of other places?

Regards
Glyn

I'd say you need to be a little more definitive - you start by titling the post Wifi "uptime", but the question seems to be related to downtime after a power outage, and specifically to the length of time a server takes to reboot or reset.

A typical fiber internet installation where I am has nothing more than the ISP's ONT which has an integrated router, ethernet switch and WiFi access point - nothing else - my ISP supplies a UPS with the ONT, so brief outages are not an issue, but if I were to restart the ONT, it would be back online and WiFi available with a few minutes, I've never timed it, but I would estimate less than five minutes.

What does this server have to do with the WiFi and how is it pertinent to the discussion?  Is it supplied by the ISP as a part of the service?

Does your question actually relate to the availability of internet service or access to the server, and is the server located in the village or remotely?

[james_s]

Most of the power outages I get here are brief blips or 10 second outages, during the first storms of the season a tree limb will hit a line somewhere and either cause a momentary dip or trip one of the automatic reclosers which then re-energizes the circuit 10 seconds later. I ended up putting a UPS on all of my IT gear, router, ONT, IP camera system and recorder and my media server. This has worked out really well, I haven't had any of this stuff get rebooted by a glitch ever since. It's especially nice for the server since that machine seems to have no way to power up automatically after a power loss. For brief outages you don't even need a large UPS, I got mine for free, just needed a new battery.

[tautech]

Yes it's way too long when in fact the ISP's network should be deemed as mission critical so should have some sort or UPS or battery backup.

Not outside developed countries. I spent a week in Pataya, and saw telecom and power lines just entangled together forming a ball of wires on poles and routed like spider webs over the sky to each buildings.

Yeah that might be the physical network but the core data network should be 100% reliable.
We saw that wire bird nests in Phuket too however they where pretty tidy compared to some pics you see posted.

Yet if trying to run a business and requiring a data connection to do so and when it's not reliable it's sometimes best to vote with your feet and get another ISP and in our case we cut the copper umbilical cord entirely and went to a P-P 5 GHz link wireless connection providing us 100Mbps and no data cap.
The national/international telcos can kiss my arse as they'll not get another cent from us for their shit services. 

[aussie1.1950]

The householders would be without power also, so I think UPS not an option.

[aussie1.1950]

The server supplies myself and a neighbour, so I presume the whole village too. I believe its inside a container.
And yes, down time could be more appropriate. The time required to restore the internet after an outage.

[fordem]

What does the server "supply" to you and your neighbour?

A server is simply a device (or a process) that provides some sort of a resource to users - there are file servers, print servers, database servers, terminal servers, just to name a few - and these have nothing to do with WiFi which is what we call the network "physical" layer - so to speak a communication medium.

I have a server in my home network, I can turn it off and it won't prevent my family members from accessing the internet using WiFi - it will prevent them from being able to retrieve files stored on the server, but they can still browse the worldwide web, watch Netflix, use Facebook and so on.

Unless you can tell us how the piece fit together and work, there's very little we can do other than make a SWAG, and that's not going to be much help.

Maybe you should be having this discussion with the service provider.

[fordem]

The householders would be without power also, so I think UPS not an option.

If there was a UPS it would keep the ISP router (and the server) powered through these "five second" outages that you say happen frequently, so it would actually solve your problem, or at least the problem you have described.

[lty1993]

It is common for an ISP grade equipment to take tens of minutes to boot up. These large chassis based devices have tons of processors inside it. Usually, both master and slave control board boots first, then they have to be in synchronize before both marked online. Then control board have to enable each line card and providing boot image to each line card. After line card online, control processor on the line card have to provision all forwarding asics based on information provided by control board. Depending on different vendors, these equipments usually takes 10-30 minutes to boot before it can passing any data.

[Halcyon]

Servers can take significant time to boot. I even have relatively "ordinary" servers which can sometimes take a minute or two just to POST, let alone begin the boot process.

[fordem]

IBM/Lenovo X-Series servers are like that.

[nuclearcat]

Many ISPs in such countries are highly inefficient and don't want to invest single cent in their infrastructure for reliability. Especially "local" operators.
IMO 2 solutions can be done:
1)Keep complaining and push other customers around you to complain about connection to ISP to force him fix his stuff. You can go higher and complain to authorities about unreliable service.
2)If internet uptime critical for you, get backup mobile internet from cellular operator or any other operator and make failover on some openwrt router.

Telecom equipment very often needs 10-15 min to boot. Worse that it will fail soon after such stress, it is not built to be often power cycled, and they will have much more significant outages and it will cost them way more than proper UPS.
Especially if it is Thailand, as far as i know they have hot and humid climate, means any power outage will knock A/C and cause thermal stress for components and even condensation issues.

[TomS_]

the ISP's network should be deemed as mission critical so should have some sort or UPS or battery backup.

Old thread I know, but residential internet services are seldom sold with any kind of SLA, even in developed countries.

Its why people often wait days for a tech to come and look at their fault and still might not even get it fixed. Business class services can have SLAs with restoration targets in as little as a few hours with penalties if that timeframe is exceeded. But you get what you pay for, and residential services dont tend to cost very much...

[tautech]

the ISP's network should be deemed as mission critical so should have some sort or UPS or battery backup.

Old thread I know, but residential internet services are seldom sold with any kind of SLA, even in developed countries.

Doesn't stop you from installing your own UPS.

I guess we're lucky to have an excellent relationship with a small mom and pop ISP and as we are at an elevated site also provide somewhere to put their infrastructure to access other customers and get rewarded with a free connection. 
Still, to ensure their customers get a reliable connection especially when they might be on another mains circuit to us in times of power failure they generously installed a small professional UPS (none of that APC muck) to keep our/their relay station alive 24/365 which of course our modem is also connected to. More 

[madires]

the ISP's network should be deemed as mission critical so should have some sort or UPS or battery backup.

Old thread I know, but residential internet services are seldom sold with any kind of SLA, even in developed countries.

Over here the typical SLA for residential DSL states a reliability of 98.5% or 97.5%, which allows outages of about a week in total. And the local DSLAM/MSAN/BGN isn't powered via a UPS. That's quite annoying because you can't use your VoIP based landline for emergencies in case of a power outage, even if you have a UPS. For POTS/ISDN the telco had to provide a power backup (classic battery bank).

[tszaboo]

I had similar experience for just a brownout. It was for the fraction of a second, no internet for 20 minutes. I dont know if it made any difference, but for me it helped to manually restart my modem, maybe the brownout/short blackout left it in an invalid state.

Servers can take significant time to boot. I even have relatively "ordinary" servers which can sometimes take a minute or two just to POST, let alone begin the boot process.

Just a RAID backplane firmware can take a minute to properly initialize.
For a blackout, it is even possible, that they have to request the configuration again, negotiate speed on the cable and so on. All these take time. And probably their server or backend equipment, even if it has backup supply, imagine, that suddenly get's hit by all customers speed negotiation.

[RoGeorge]

The router resets in about 2 minutes, but the server for the village takes about 20 minutes.
Is this too long?
I would expect only about 2 minutes for the server.

No, it is not unusual for a server to take 10-20 minutes to start, depending on their age, their configuration and their settings.  There's nothing one can do about that, except buying newer servers or bypass critical startup tests, which will be a hassle for the admins and not a good idea anyway, especially after a power failure.

At most, check that the UPS batteries have enough time to properly power down the servers.

[NiHaoMike]

Microchip has come up with a solution to supply power from the customer end (generator or batteries owned by the customer) to the ISP. Not sure what percentage of customers need to be providing power for that to work.
https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/power-management/reverse-power-feed-rpf

[drussell]

Microchip has come up with a solution to supply power from the customer end (generator or batteries owned by the customer) to the ISP. Not sure what percentage of customers need to be providing power for that to work.

You're going to need a pretty bright flashlight at the customer end to send enough power back up the fiber to power the head end.   

[NiHaoMike]

For fiber, they could design the cable to have a copper or aluminum pair for backup power and checking the physical integrity of the line. (E.g. fiber link down and pair not connected or shorted = major damage, fiber link up but pair has excessive leakage to ground = damage to outer jacket.)

[vk6zgo]

The server supplies myself and a neighbour, so I presume the whole village too. I believe its inside a container.
And yes, down time could be more appropriate. The time required to restore the internet after an outage.

So the village all just need Wifi to access the Internet, rather than individual connections, rather like a hotel
or similar, so your provider just needs to use the server to drive a WiFi hub?
Or have I got it all wrong?