The life of a remote HF Operator

Mike-VA3MW

This is the life of remote operating. 

About 5:45 today, I go to turn on the remote HF rig.  No Go - not sure why.  

 I know it is online, etc. 

I do a remote reboot of the radio via my control panel (local to the radio).  This often clears up some port issues on the pfSense router.

Seconds later, the entire remote site disappears.  No Web cams.. nothing. 

****... what was wired incorrectly? 

Did the modem power end cord up over on the radio reboot relay?   No, that is a 100% separate control system.  Designed so that you have to actually log into a RPI to reboot the modem with a script you have to hand type in.  Nope, that isn't it.

Maybe the pfSense firewall crashed.  No simple recovery remotely there.  **** again.

Every 20 minutes, the RPI checks for Internet and reboots the Modem.  I'll wait until 6pm.  6:02pm. The router should reboot about 6:05pm if no  internet.   Nothing.  !@#$%$%^^&

I see a 90 minute drive in my future.  Each way.  In the dark dark (not a big deal for me as I can listen to the hockey game).  

Walk away from the keyboard.  Go have dinner.  Pray to the remote HF radio gods that this will recover.  

6:11pm.  Email arrives from Hydro One (power company).  There is a Hydro outage in your area.  Estimated uptime 6:30pm.  

6:34pm  Everything back online.

Moral of the story.  Sometimes the radio outage is just the symptom.  Not the fix.

Moral 2 - If it can go wrong, it will.

Mike va3mw

Alan

Mike-VA3MW

It is all UPSd. 

When the power goes out like this, so do the upstream switches on the cable network.  

The emails showed up after the power came on.  

My stuff never powered down as my power was never off.  It was a cable company outage. 

Joe - KC2TN

Auto start generator with transfer switch?

Neil D Friedman N3DF

Mike-VA3MW

That wouldn't help in this case.  The root cause is that the Power Failure in the area took out my ISP, but not my QTH.  So, if I really needed to fix this, I would have to have a 2nd ISP with a hot switch over.  At this time, it isn't worth the expense.

Mike

Steve K9ZW

Keith WA0BEU

Thanks for the info Mike, and great comments!

BL7IB

Mike,

You said rebooting "often clears up some port issues on the pfSense route". I found things are running more smoothly if I setup fixed IP and fixed port mapping.

I am using a device from msnswitch.com to auto-reboot modem and router automatically when no internet detected.

The device is almost 10 years old. Thanks for inspiring idea. I will try to use Raspberry pi and relay board to replace it.

Did you code yourself or you found some free nice program to do the job?

73

Rocky

BL7iB

Mike-VA3MW

Hi Rocky

Yes, that is an ok option. We usually don't want to recommend that to customers who do not have any networking experience since it rapidly becomes an issue with attempting to solve an issue. :)

Here is what we see that impacts SmartLink and Wifi operations:

Network Mesh installed and the Mesh is not in a bridge mode, which results in 2 unique networks

WiFi extenders that also create unique subnets (aka, they need to be in a bridge mode). We are not a fan of WiFi extenders as they make it look like you have full signal, but not any improved bandwidth.

Hardcoded port forwards that aren't updated when DHCP address on the radio changes (DHCP reservations are preferred over hard coded IP addresses for the radios)

WiFi AP's that block client to client communications.

I hope that helps and thanks for your comments! 73