Hi,

On the subject of needing to reboot ones router.... can anyone recommend
a suitable remote control switch that could power-cycle it? I can't seem
to find anything except electronics kits.

Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
instead.

Thanks,

-- 

John Devereux

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:35:55 +0000, John Devereux 
wrote:

> On the subject of needing to reboot ones router.... can anyone recommend
> a suitable remote control switch that could power-cycle it? I can't seem
> to find anything except electronics kits.
>
> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
> instead.

Until you find something clever enough to autoboot on loss of routing or
under remote control, a simple digital outlet timer set to turn off in the
wee small hours of the night and then back on one minute later will at
least prevent extended outages while you are away on an extended trip.

Tony

"Anthony R. Gold"  writes:

> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:35:55 +0000, John Devereux 
> wrote:
>
>> On the subject of needing to reboot ones router.... can anyone recommend
>> a suitable remote control switch that could power-cycle it? I can't seem
>> to find anything except electronics kits.
>>
>> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
>> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
>> instead.
>
> Until you find something clever enough to autoboot on loss of routing or
> under remote control, a simple digital outlet timer set to turn off in the
> wee small hours of the night and then back on one minute later will at
> least prevent extended outages while you are away on an extended trip.

Hi Tony,

I am worried it will decide to connect with 0.0.0.0 (or in some other
way fail). It's to improve out-of-office-hours access to a company
hosted server. So once a day would not be enough, I would need more like
twice per hour to be "good enough".

Thanks,

-- 

John Devereux

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:31:26 +0000, John Devereux 
wrote:

> "Anthony R. Gold"  writes:
>
>> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:35:55 +0000, John Devereux 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On the subject of needing to reboot ones router.... can anyone recommend
>>> a suitable remote control switch that could power-cycle it? I can't seem
>>> to find anything except electronics kits.
>>>
>>> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
>>> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
>>> instead.
>>
>> Until you find something clever enough to autoboot on loss of routing or
>> under remote control, a simple digital outlet timer set to turn off in the
>> wee small hours of the night and then back on one minute later will at
>> least prevent extended outages while you are away on an extended trip.
>
> Hi Tony,
>
> I am worried it will decide to connect with 0.0.0.0 (or in some other
> way fail). It's to improve out-of-office-hours access to a company
> hosted server. So once a day would not be enough, I would need more like
> twice per hour to be "good enough".

Until you find a smarter solution I suggest that you configure the router
to the fixed address you were assigned and also set the timer for a reboot
at (or just prior to) the start of those out-of-office-hours.  I spend more
that 50% of my time out of the country and those measures work for me.

Tony

"Anthony R. Gold"  writes:

> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:31:26 +0000, John Devereux 
> wrote:
>
>> "Anthony R. Gold"  writes:
>>
>>> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:35:55 +0000, John Devereux 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On the subject of needing to reboot ones router.... can anyone recommend
>>>> a suitable remote control switch that could power-cycle it? I can't seem
>>>> to find anything except electronics kits.
>>>>
>>>> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
>>>> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
>>>> instead.
>>>
>>> Until you find something clever enough to autoboot on loss of routing or
>>> under remote control, a simple digital outlet timer set to turn off in the
>>> wee small hours of the night and then back on one minute later will at
>>> least prevent extended outages while you are away on an extended trip.
>>
>> Hi Tony,
>>
>> I am worried it will decide to connect with 0.0.0.0 (or in some other
>> way fail). It's to improve out-of-office-hours access to a company
>> hosted server. So once a day would not be enough, I would need more like
>> twice per hour to be "good enough".
>
> Until you find a smarter solution I suggest that you configure the router
> to the fixed address you were assigned

Actually I have done that and in fact it is much improved.

> and also set the timer for a reboot
> at (or just prior to) the start of those out-of-office-hours.  I spend more
> that 50% of my time out of the country and those measures work for me.

A ~7am reboot would probably be an improvement over the current
situation. The external sales could check their email before setting off
for the day, and if it messes up there will be someone in the office by
~8am to try again.

Thanks,

-- 

John Devereux

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:35:55 +0000, John Devereux wrote:

> On the subject of needing to reboot ones router.... can anyone recommend
> a suitable remote control switch that could power-cycle it? I can't seem
> to find anything except electronics kits.
> 
> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
> instead.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -- 
> 
> John Devereux

-- 
Cheers
Dave.

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:35:55 +0000, John Devereux wrote:

> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
> instead.

Ah just found the thread in uk.d-i-y (Thread: Releasing a security
door over the internet) that has some other interesting boxes:

http://www.audon.co.uk/iprelay.html
http://www.digidave.co.uk/jshop/product.php?xProd=206&xSec=22

-- 
Cheers
Dave.

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:35:55 +0000, John Devereux wrote:

Bother worong button...

> On the subject of needing to reboot ones router.... can anyone recommend
> a suitable remote control switch that could power-cycle it? I can't seem
> to find anything except electronics kits.

Wot's wrong with kits?

I thought I posted some links to stuff in the other thread but can't
find 'em now so prehaps I didn't.

http://dataprobe.com/remote-reboot.html
http://dataprobe.com/remote_power/power_pal.html

http://www.motron.com/product_info.php/products_id/105

US based so might be tricky to find over here, though I think I saw
the Power-Pal in UK web shops.

-- 
Cheers
Dave.

> On the subject of needing to reboot ones router.... can anyone recommend
> a suitable remote control switch that could power-cycle it? I can't seem
> to find anything except electronics kits.

Not phone/DTMF-operated, but for a similar application I bought one of 
these:
  http://www.audon.co.uk/ip9258ping.html
  
The idea was to configure it to ping an external host, then power-cycle an 
attached router if there were no responses for a while.

It behaved quite happily in a test environment, on the desk next to me, 
but as soon as I deployed it in earnest, it misbehaved and power-cycled 
the router every 10 minutes, despite maintained connectivity!

I haven't had time to investigate properly yet, and now merely use the 
device as an IP-controlled 4-way power switch, in which role it behaves 
fine.

Simon.

"Dave Liquorice"  writes:

> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:35:55 +0000, John Devereux wrote:
>
> Bother worong button...
>
>> On the subject of needing to reboot ones router.... can anyone recommend
>> a suitable remote control switch that could power-cycle it? I can't seem
>> to find anything except electronics kits.
>
> Wot's wrong with kits?

Lazy I suppose :) I can build one if I have to, but thought there might
be some ready-to-go consumer thing (similar to a time switch, with a
phone socket in the side).

> I thought I posted some links to stuff in the other thread but can't
> find 'em now so prehaps I didn't.
>
> http://dataprobe.com/remote-reboot.html
> http://dataprobe.com/remote_power/power_pal.html
>
> http://www.motron.com/product_info.php/products_id/105
>
> US based so might be tricky to find over here, though I think I saw
> the Power-Pal in UK web shops.

Thanks,

-- 

John Devereux

On Tue, 2009-10-27 at 08:35 퍍, John Devereux wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On the subject of needing to reboot ones router.... can anyone recommend
> a suitable remote control switch that could power-cycle it? I can't seem
> to find anything except electronics kits.
> 
> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
> instead.

If I dial one of the internal extensions on my Asterisk box (which I can
obviously reach from the outside), then it runs an expect script which
telnets to the router and resets it.

If you really want to power cycle it, you could try some X10 kit:
http://www.uk-automation.co.uk/home-automation-c-140.html

-- 
dwmw2

John Devereux wrote:
> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
> instead.

I would find a USB controlled switch, then setup a simple script to ping 
some address that you trust (perhaps a selection of addresses inside 
A&A's network) then power cycle the router if none of the addresses 
respond. You can even do this sort of thing with the legacy COM port, if 
you have one.

Beware if you do this that timing a PING is not safe. If the router 
finds no operable route, then your PING responds in <1mS but with a 
failure message, so you have to examine the text of the response to see 
if it really worked.

-- 
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Anthony R. Gold wrote:

>
> Until you find a smarter solution I suggest that you configure the router
> to the fixed address you were assigned and also set the timer for a reboot
> at (or just prior to) the start of those out-of-office-hours.  I spend more
> that 50% of my time out of the country and those measures work for me.
>
> Tony
>

I've put in a ping expect script on my pc to reboot the router and put in 
the fixed ip address on the router.  But i have had a situation where the 
router has needed the big red switch following a break of adsl service.

I am thinking of putting in a timer in the mains socket to switch off and 
on again every night when I go away.  But doesn't this constant rebooting 
have a detrimental effect on the bras rate?  I suppose it doesn't matter 
when I just want my email to work whilst I'm on holiday

-- 
Alan

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:05:00 +0000, Alan Clifford wrote:

> But doesn't this constant rebooting have a detrimental effect on the 
> bras rate?  

Once every 24hrs and assuming that the sync rate is always more or
less the same no it won't. The one thing that knackers your sync rate
is a thunderstorm nearby. The bursts of electrical noise from each
lightening strike cause a resync and the increased level of noise
will push the sync rate down the BRAS will follow. If I'm home I
switch the ADSL modem off during thunderstorms to preserve the BRAS.

-- 
Cheers
Dave.

In article ,
	John Devereux  writes:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On the subject of needing to reboot ones router.... can anyone recommend
> a suitable remote control switch that could power-cycle it? I can't seem
> to find anything except electronics kits.
> 
> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
> instead.

Probably not much help to you, but I drive mine off my home
automation system, which I can access over the Internet or
phone. That's got 48 direct outputs, of which I'm currently
using about half. 6 of these switch 6 socket outlets around
my computers, and the router is plugged into one of these.
The home automation system can also send and receive X10
commands, but I don't make much use of that.

-- 
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009, Dave Liquorice wrote:

> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:05:00 퍍, Alan Clifford wrote:
>
>> But doesn't this constant rebooting have a detrimental effect on the
>> bras rate?
>
> Once every 24hrs and assuming that the sync rate is always more or
> less the same no it won't. The one thing that knackers your sync rate
> is a thunderstorm nearby. The bursts of electrical noise from each
> lightening strike cause a resync and the increased level of noise
> will push the sync rate down the BRAS will follow. If I'm home I
> switch the ADSL modem off during thunderstorms to preserve the BRAS.
>
>


Thanks for that.

Are there any recommendations for a timer?  Maplin have one that appears 
to support an off period of just one minute at £9.99, which seems ideal.

-- 
Alan

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John Devereux wrote:
> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
> instead.

http://www.c-p-p.co.uk/product/asp/ProdID/2367/CtgID/1037/af/page.htm

Nick.
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On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:47:00 +0000, Alan Clifford  wrote:

> Are there any recommendations for a timer?  Maplin have one that appears 
> to support an off period of just one minute at £9.99, which seems ideal.

I've never seen any digital timer that does not support 1 minute periods -
it's just the mechanical segment ones that have worse resolution - but also
I've thrown out a lot of turkeys - ones that do spontaneous resets.  I'm
sure my Maplin ones went that way, same as Homebase and various others.

So far I'm delighted with these from Argos: http://tinyurl.com/yzeyd3z but
their two disadvantages are they come in boxes of three and they are quite
tall, so may not fit in a socket close below a cabinet, shelf or worktop.

Ton

Nick Barnes <nick@vitell.COmpany.UnitedKingdom> writes:

> John Devereux wrote:
>> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
>> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
>> instead.
>
> http://www.c-p-p.co.uk/product/asp/ProdID/2367/CtgID/1037/af/page.htm
>
> Nick.

Hey, I think we have a winner!

Thanks Nick, and all.


-- 

John Devereux

Anthony R. Gold wrote:
> So far I'm delighted with these from Argos: http://tinyurl.com/yzeyd3z but
> their two disadvantages are they come in boxes of three and they are quite
> tall, so may not fit in a socket close below a cabinet, shelf or worktop.

I'm on my second box of those, and all are going well after two years 
plus. I can vouch for the fact that they work upside down (one of the 
sockets in my house was fitted upside down by the previous owners, and 
I've never bothered to fix this) - it might be useful in confined spaces.

You'd have to be wary if your router uses a "power brick" which is flush 
on the rear, and extends more than about 1cm above the earth pin, as 
these time switches protrude about 12mm from about 12mm above the earth 
pin hole. I've used a 13A adapter as as "extension piece", but it's 
messy. (Looks "Heath-Robinson")

-- 
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk

John Devereux wrote:
> Nick Barnes <nick@vitell.COmpany.UnitedKingdom> writes:

>> John Devereux wrote:
>> http://www.c-p-p.co.uk/product/asp/ProdID/2367/CtgID/1037/af/page.htm

> Hey, I think we have a winner!

Do check that your router powers up after a power outage - my previous 
LinkSys WAG54GX2 did not.

I presume you've checked this, but just in case…

-- 
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk

John Devereux  writes:

> Nick Barnes <nick@vitell.COmpany.UnitedKingdom> writes:
>
>> John Devereux wrote:
>>> Telephone operated, DTMF I guess. Thinking about it, it doesn't even
>>> need to be a mains output since I could interrupt the routers DC supply
>>> instead.
>>
>> http://www.c-p-p.co.uk/product/asp/ProdID/2367/CtgID/1037/af/page.htm
>>
>> Nick.
>
> Hey, I think we have a winner!
>
> Thanks Nick, and all.

...

And as surely as night follows day, we lost the connection again this
weekend. (The Saturday night disconnect). Failed to automatically
reconnect, as usual.

But! I got the remote control phone switch!

Dial the access number, listen to the beeps, enter the codes... did it
work?

Yes! Back on line :)

-- 

John Devereux

John Devereux wrote:
> Dial the access number, listen to the beeps, enter the codes... did it
> work?
> 
> Yes! Back on line :)

I wish I'd had one of those in my local BT exchange, when it kept 
dropping my ADSL because of rain coming in the roof. :-)

-- 
Steve Swift
http://www.swiftys.org.uk/swifty.html
http://www.ringers.org.uk