Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 7 years and 4 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

In case you hadn’t noticed (and if not, why not? 😉 ), windracer.net was down for the past week. This was because my cable modem decided to lock up just hours after I left town for Christmas in north Florida with family. I called Spectrum (formerly Brighthouse Networks) from my in-laws’ house hoping they could reset the modem remotely, but the tech informed me the modem was fine, it must be my router. Grrr.

So this past week away from home was a real eye-opener to me on how reliant I am on internet access for the house. I couldn’t check on my cameras, my home automation schedules didn’t run (so no randomized indoor lights, no Christmas lights or landscape lighting, etc.), I wasn’t getting e-mails from my servers, couldn’t remote in to anything, my domains were down … the list goes on! So over the Christmas break I did some research on out-of-band access options that would allow me to get into the home network in case something like this happens again. I originally was looking at cellular devices like this, but they all seem to be GSM (2G) and most carriers are shutting down those older networks. So I decided to go with a “smart” power strip, the Web Power Switch 7, which can power cycle devices plugged into it based on network connectivity criteria. For example, if it can’t ping the internet, it can power cycle my cable modem (which would have fixed the problem I had this past week). I will, of course, write up a review once I receive it and have a chance to configure and set it up.

When I finally got home today, I checked my router and it was fine! But it was reporting a problem on eth0 (which is the cable modem). I rebooted the cable modem, and everything came back online! So it was the modem after all, despite what Spectrum had told me. Hopefully the Web Power 7 helps me to avoid these long-term internet outages in the future!