Power Outage Today. What worked, what failed, & lessons learned....

Posted by AbeCollins (A) on July 18, 2011 at 19:50:28

Long, but might be of interest to some:

We had a neighborhood power outage today around 5:30pm that lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes. I was right in the middle of doing some work online and lost my internet connection. This wasn't supposed to happen but I learned why and was able to restore it quickly.

We have two Mac Mini music servers, one iMac for general purpose use, and my MacBook Pro for work. We also have two Windows XP deskside PCs and a Windows 7 laptop.

Networking gear consists of a Comcast Cable Modem (internally battery backed), Apple Airport Extreme WiFi router, and two small 8-port Cisco (Linksys) switches.

Our main telephone service is on Comcast via the Cable Modem as is the internet. The second telephone line is via a wireless device on Verizon's cellular network. They call it Verizon Home Connect. The little box with antenna on it is also battery backed and good for a few hours w/o AC power.

Pretty much EVERYTHING is on multiple battery backup UPS's throughout the house. And most are fairly small at about 350 to 550VA. We have 5 UPS's in this house!

I have the Macs set to power off gracefully after being on UPS battery for 30-minutes. They could go longer but no sense in fully depleating the UPS battery if there's no need. This worked perfectly as it should.

The wife's Windows XP PC is on a UPS but it's not setup for graceful shutdown. It will just run until the battery gives up then cuts power to the PC. This is set up for an eventual disk crash and OS corruption. ;-) I manually shut it down before this could happen.

Can you imagine 5 UPS's all beeping randomly to let me know that the AC power has failed and the UPS's are active!? This is what I listened to for over an hour today. ;-)

Now the interesting part. The WiFi router is on a UPS as are my Cisco switches so why did my internet go down? The Comcast Cable Modem is also battery backed internally. Why no internet?

I called Comcast (on the old analog hardwired AT&T Princess phone) and learned that the battery backup in the Cable Modem is there only to support the telephone for up to 8-hours. It will not provide power to maintain the internet as that was a design trade off in favor of having as much battery as possible for the phone. Well this makes sense.

Here's another potential gotcha that I knew about but forgot once the power went out. My base unit for the Panasonic cordless phones on our Comcast system is not plugged into a UPS. So if the base unit loses power, none of these cordless phones will work. Duh! But, realizing this potential problem when I set it up, I have an old fashion AT&T corded "Princess" phone plugged into the Comcast cable modem down in the basement.

The other base unit for the other set of cordless phones that are tied to the Verizon Home Connect box IS on a UPS. So our cordless phone system on the Verizon setup continued to work.

Oh, to solve the lost internet connection, I plugged the Cable Modem into a UPS even though it has it's own internal battery. This 'fools' it by keeping AC power to the unit which keeps the cable modem running for our internet connection.

As a secondary internet connection solution, I have my iPhone 4 that can act as a Wifi hotspot but I didn't use it. I wanted to figure out why my main internet service went down. Problem solved!

No music servers, DACs, amps, or other electronics were harmed. We were concerned about the goodies in the fridge but fortunately power came back up in time.

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Topic - Power Outage Today. What worked, what failed, & lessons learned.... - AbeCollins 19:50:28 07/18/11 (34)

RE: Why not get a Natural Gas Generator and call it done? /nt/ - Astroimage 15:23:25 07/19/11 (2)

Umm, I can't produce that much natural gas.. - AbeCollins 22:28:34 07/19/11 (1)

RE: Umm, I can't produce that much natural gas.. - Astroimage 13:43:58 07/20/11 (0)

What is your main concern?..................... - Cut-Throat 12:40:26 07/19/11 (14)

RE: What is your main concern?..................... - AbeCollins 13:48:47 07/19/11 (13)

RE: What is your main concern?..................... - Cut-Throat 13:56:09 07/19/11 (12)

RE: What is your main concern?..................... - Tony Lauck 17:31:51 07/19/11 (10)

RE: What is your main concern?..................... - Cut-Throat 17:46:33 07/19/11 (9)

RE: What is your main concern?..................... - AbeCollins 22:33:36 07/19/11 (8)

RE: What is your main concern?..................... - Old Listener 12:00:36 07/20/11 (1)

"That is the only problem solving technique that many personal computer users know. "....... - Cut-Throat 14:32:51 07/20/11 (0)

RE: What is your main concern?..................... - Cut-Throat 04:22:23 07/20/11 (5)

PC viruses, bloatware, pop-ups, decrapifiers, and race cars....... - AbeCollins 08:11:11 07/20/11 (4)

RE: PC viruses, bloatware, pop-ups, decrapifiers, and race cars....... - Old Listener 11:45:25 07/20/11 (3)

RE: PC viruses, bloatware, pop-ups, decrapifiers, and race cars....... - AbeCollins 20:25:33 07/20/11 (2)

Nothing but Marketshare......Not Technology..............nt - Cut-Throat 13:38:40 07/21/11 (1)

Insecure technology as wall - Tony Lauck 15:11:35 07/21/11 (0)

RE: What is your main concern?..................... - AbeCollins 14:12:19 07/19/11 (0)

yep been there and done that - jimmyjames 10:59:02 07/19/11 (1)

So true! - AbeCollins 13:50:21 07/19/11 (0)

RE: Power Outage Today. What worked, what failed, & lessons learned.... - rick_m 07:39:26 07/19/11 (2)

RE: Power Outage Today. What worked, what failed, & lessons learned.... - AbeCollins 13:58:22 07/19/11 (1)

RE: Power Outage Today. What worked, what failed, & lessons learned.... - rick_m 15:49:40 07/19/11 (0)

I have one big UPS and a lot of batteries... - Tweekeng 21:39:57 07/18/11 (10)

Interesting... - AbeCollins 05:53:58 07/19/11 (9)

RE: Interesting... - Tweekeng 21:56:22 07/19/11 (1)

I understand ;-) - AbeCollins 22:38:48 07/19/11 (0)

seems to be ups's are really only for critical applications... - Tom Schuman 17:02:17 07/19/11 (6)

RE: seems to be ups's are really only for critical applications... - fmak 23:22:08 07/19/11 (3)

RE: seems to be ups's are really only for critical applications... - Tony Lauck 08:36:58 07/20/11 (2)

Trust me... - fmak 10:27:48 07/20/11 (1)

RE: Trust me... - AbeCollins 23:05:49 07/20/11 (0)

RE: seems to be ups's are really only for critical applications... - AbeCollins 22:41:55 07/19/11 (0)

RE: seems to be ups's are really only for critical applications... - Tweekeng 18:23:17 07/19/11 (0)

Power Outage Today. What worked, what failed, & lessons learned....

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