I just wanted to see what other selfhosters backup emergency plan is if the primary internet router goes offline but the internet isn’t out (ie a router reboot would fix the problem), leaving you without access to your stuff even via vpn.

the options I’ve considered so far:

  1. cellular smart plug to reboot router

I tried a ubibot smart plug (SP1) that is supposed to work with cellular, but the device or sim is bad. I’m currently troubleshooting. The problem with this one is it requires a proprietary cloud service, it’s supposedly self hostable, but it’s a pia to setup and their app port can’t be changed easily allowing for a reverse proxy setup on VPS.

  1. the other option I am considering is cellular wifi router and a wifi smart plug connected to that device to reboot router

what other options have I overlooked? Also, specific models of devices would be helpful info from others doing this already.

TIA!

Edit: also just thought of possibly a cellular internet backup on my opnsense box, but from everything I’ve read that’s also very involved to setup

Edit2: I’ve setup a homeassistant automation to reboot a zigbee smart plug if 2 external hosts are down for 15 mins, will try this out for a bit. I still need tp troubleshoot why the device goes down in General. Thanks for all the responses and ideas!

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I’ve moved my instant messenger onto a VPS and that has a good uptime. And I’m somewhat okay if my Nextcloud and calendars don’t sync. Most important data is synced anyway.

    Other than that I’ve called my ISP a bunch of times to give me a new router, they refused, I canceled the subscription and made a new one and got a new router. And that one is better. And in doubt I’ll call a family member.

  • thelittleblackbird@lemmy.worldEnglish
    141·
    3 months ago

    It didn’t happen in more than 5 years…

    For critical equipment you need to spend the extra dollar to minimize this kind of stuff

    • smashing3606@feddit.onlineOPEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      I don’t understand this comment? Your router hasn’t gone down in 5 years, is that what you’re saying?

      • thelittleblackbird@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        Yep, at least for their own internal mistake. I rebooted them a few times in that time because updates and important config updates. Even for power outages (2 iirc) they are resilient, they are set to automatic boot up when the power is back.

  • lemming741@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I have a Shelly plug that is programmed internally to turn itself on if off for 20 seconds. Home assistant turns the plug off for 10 seconds if curl ip.me fails for 15 minutes.

    My modem is plugged into that.

    I’ve never had a router or firewall crash if I wasn’t fucking with it and did something stupid ill-advised, so I don’t try that kind of stuff unless I’m home.

  • anotherandrew@lemmy.mixdown.caEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    I’ve got one of those KeepConnect smart plugs which monitors a few different external servers and their own cloud, and automatically power cycles its outlet if things don’t work. They’ve damn near doubled in price since I’ve bought mine but it does work very well for me. Annual fee is reasonable too.

    I could build something similar but I have too many projects as it is, and I feel I’d be fiddling with it endlessly just because I can. This is literally set and forget and in the last 2y it’s cycled the outlet 48 times, most of them in the middle of the night, presumably with my cable provider maintenance windows.

    • smashing3606@feddit.onlineOPEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      I’m thinking this is probably my best option if I can get past the using cloud service issue in my head lol.

    • smashing3606@feddit.onlineOPEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      I do recall seeing the keepconnect a while ago, but completely forgot about it. will definitely look into this! I guess the main issue I see is that it uses a cloud service, what happens when that service goes offline permanently?

      • thejml@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        If you were able to capture some traffic, you could probably figure out what its hitting and the response its looking for and then override that dns entry and fake that from your homelab or you’re own cloud hosted app/lambda/api.

  • PetteriPano@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    3 months ago

    I had a 4G modem with a web interface many years ago. It was flaky and would often hang. I just had a raspberry pi on my network pinging some known address, if it failed for long enough it’d replay the commands to restart the web interface.

    If I’d have the same problem today I’d probably have home assistant power cycle the router with a smart plug.

  • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Old laptop with SIM card and some outbound remote access (eg logmein, Tailscale) is what some people I know use. But it’s an expense. I just have a reboot script.

  • False@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    The term to look for is out of band management. Typically this will provide serial/console access to a device, and can often perform actions like power cycling. A lot of server hardware has this built in (eg idrac for Dell, IPMI generically). Some users will have a separate oobm network for remotely accessing/managing everything else.

  • sznowicki@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    So far it never happened but just in case I always leave one of my keys at some neighbors. I do it anyway because if something happens like broken pipe, it’s good when someone can just enter home without destroying our doors.

  • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
    52·
    3 months ago

    Its my house so ill just walk over and fix it.

    If im out, nothing is too important enough that it cant be fixed in a couple of days.

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    At the enterprise level an Opengear appliance fixes this.

    Tripplite PDUs have an option to perform a ping test against an ip, and if it stops responding it can power cycle the outlet of your choice.

    If you want to get fancy you can advertise routes from two routers into your L3 switch and if a route goes down your switch will use the backup.

  • eco_game@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    38·
    3 months ago

    For me I’d just say oh well, gotta fix it when I’m home again.

    Otherwise I’d probably write some script on the server, which reboots my router when the server either doesn’t have internet anymore or can’t ping itself.

    • smashing3606@feddit.onlineOPEnglish
      5·
      3 months ago

      This only works if you’re planning on being home within a reasonable time. The situation that got me thinking about it in the first place was, I was out of state for several weeks and my router went down a couple days into my trip and had no access to jellyfin (mind you at the time this was really the only service I really wanted). So I had to call my brother who lives 30 mins away to go reboot my router.

  • Decipher0771@lemmy.caEnglish
    53·
    3 months ago

    I buy better gear that doesn’t regularly require a reboot

    My mikrotik has not NEEDED a reboot ever, except when I run upgrades. Everything is set up to auto recover when disconnects happen, and power up properly if there’s an extended power failure that causes UPS shutdowns.

    I will never understand why people think rebooting their router regularly is a normal thing. That just means your gear or setup is crap.

    • SteveTech@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      My Mikrotik routers and switches also reboot in seconds (even for upgrades), which I’ve never seen consumer gear do!

      Even my Ubiquiti switches seem to take a minute or so to start forwarding traffic after a reboot; whilst my Mikrotik switches reboot faster than any of my unmanaged switches start up.

      • eclipse@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        Cisco, HP, and many other “Enterprise” switches will take a minute or two to start forwarding frames after boot.

        Doesn’t really excuse Ubiquiti but that’s what they’re trying for.

      • Decipher0771@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        That’s called unnecessary overkill and you’ll introduce failures from excess complexity.

        • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          Actually they are a reduction in complexity, yes I am not using most of the features, they run in L2, but their backbone runs off a x86 single board computer and they run a mostly hardware agnostic OS (Sonic).

          This is what I mean by a reduction in complexity, it’s basically running debian os with pcie switchdev interfaces on a PC. It’s familiar and stable, not locked in to proprietary hardware, they’re cheap and plentiful

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    If you use a regular PC as the router you can attach a KVM to remote control and reboot it.

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    • If your problem is brief brownouts or similar — my experience is that some consumer broadband routers have cheap power supplies that leaves them in bad states when PCs will pull through — you could put them on a UPS.

    • If your problem is that your router is unstable, you could just replace your router. Like, if you need remote access and you have a flaky router, that seems like a prime choice.

    • You could have a power control device or something and have another machine on your network set up so that if it loses Internet connectivity for some sustained period of time, it power-cycles the router.

    • If this is for when you’re a long ways away, do you have a friend who you’d trust with a key and flipping a switch?

    • I expect that there are business-oriented routers that will have integrated watchdog features that will auto-reboot if they hang. I have not gone looking, though.

    • Possibly, if it’s compatible with your use case, and uptime is critical enough here, having a second, backup server elsewhere, possibly not self-hosted. I mean, your connectivity is always going to be bounded by the reliability of your residential Internet connection otherwise.