I'm must wondering what methods members use to keep their Internet link stayin' alive for remote monitoring. I'm sure everyone has faced the problem of the Internet link going down and staying down, even after the Internet provider has fixed an issue at their end.
One cheap revival method is to use an electronic timer which cuts the power and then restarts the modem every night. That's a reasonably good solution for a residential user who's away on holidays but it's not good enough for most businesses, especially during the night when there may be no staff in the office to power cycle the modem.
A more expensive solution would be to have a redundant Internet connection, such as 3G or 4G. While that works well for modest demands, it's likely to be expensive for monitoring video for any length of time as 3G and 4G data plans are usually comparitively expensive, as well as much slower than hard-wired broadband.
I've been looking for a simple solution which is likely to revive the main Internet link almost as soon as the Internet provider has overcome problems at their end, rather than waiting up to 24 hours for a scheduled restart of the modem. The best solution I've found so far is the Aviosys IP Power 9255. It has a WatchDog or Auto Ping feature which frequently pings one or more IP addresses to see if it/they can be reached. If unsuccessful, it can power cycle the attached equipment (esp. a modem) to help revive the connection.
The pros are this device seems to do what I want. The cons are:
- Costs more than many ADSL2+ modems!
- Auto Ping is not the main function of the device and it is designed to perform lots of other complicated and technical tasks.
- The overly complicated software interface doesn't seem to have been developed by a human being.
- The unit itself is ugly.
I'd greatly appreciate hearing from any member who has an elegant solution to reviving interruped Internet connections. I'd also love to hear about any other products with a WatchDog/Auto Ping feature that just do that and little else so as to keep the product simple and hopefully less expensive. Thank you for any ideas!