home router battery backup

Thu Jan 13 15:15:09 UTC 2022

> On Jan 12, 2022, at 5:11 PM, Scott T Anderson via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org> wrote:
> 
> For those individuals with backup battery power for their modem/router, do they maintain Internet access throughout a power outage (as long as their backup power solution works)? I.e., does the rest of the ISP network maintain service throughout a power outage?

I honestly don’t know.

My entire subdivision is fairly new (early 2000s) and all utilities are underground. Therefore, power outages are extremely rare. We’ve lived in this house for 9 years and I think there’s been maybe one short outage due to a blown transformer somewhere, several years ago.

Last winter though during the EXTREME cold snap where we hit -31 in Lincoln, Nebraska, the power company did have to resort to deliberately shutting off entire neighborhoods for short periods, 30-45 minutes, to maintain the overall grid. My home was not in one of the affected areas, but we were close.

My office was though, and that was a shitstorm. We are a small company, less than 20 people, most of whom work from home. The power company said the rotating outages would be 30-45 minutes, which I do have UPS capacity to handle. But the rotating outage went close to 2 hours, exhausting my UPS capacity and getting to the point where I was more concerned about the temperature in the building. However, during that time I do know my ISP had no trouble. Allo Communications, a FTTH outfit.

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Andy Ringsmuth
5609 Harding Drive
Lincoln, NE 68521-5831
(402) 304-0083
andy at andyring.com