Remote Power Cycle Router
Discussion
I'm lucky enough to have inherited my old family home which is about 180 miles away from where I currently live. The hope is that one day we'll be in a position to live there ourselves but in the meantime it earns it's keep by being rented out as a holiday cottage.
Over the years I've installed various 'smart' devices to help to manage the place while it's empty so have remote control over various heating and security systems via the internet. I've also got smart wifi switches installed to allow me to power-cycle reset some of the systems and have remote management over the broadband router so that I can remotely reboot it if necessary. The house is single storey so the router lives in the loft of the house where it's secure but the wifi range still covers the house for guests to use.
The problem is that once in a while (thankfully very rarely!) the router itself hangs which prevents me connecting to anything, including the router itself to reboot it. The only way out of it has been to ask the next guest at the house to cycle the power to the whole house at the fuseboard, or to drive a 360 mile round trip myself to do it. I'm trying to find something to allow me to power cycle the route remotely without relying on having a broadband connection. Can anyone recommend anything such as a switch which communicates through a PAYG SIM to achieve this?
Over the years I've installed various 'smart' devices to help to manage the place while it's empty so have remote control over various heating and security systems via the internet. I've also got smart wifi switches installed to allow me to power-cycle reset some of the systems and have remote management over the broadband router so that I can remotely reboot it if necessary. The house is single storey so the router lives in the loft of the house where it's secure but the wifi range still covers the house for guests to use.
The problem is that once in a while (thankfully very rarely!) the router itself hangs which prevents me connecting to anything, including the router itself to reboot it. The only way out of it has been to ask the next guest at the house to cycle the power to the whole house at the fuseboard, or to drive a 360 mile round trip myself to do it. I'm trying to find something to allow me to power cycle the route remotely without relying on having a broadband connection. Can anyone recommend anything such as a switch which communicates through a PAYG SIM to achieve this?
Sounds like you are over complicating it. If the router is hanging there is probably a fault. Get a better router, and preferably don't keep it in a really hot loft. One of my routers hangs occasionally and I put it down to the fact it is over 10 years old. My new router which does most of the work here never hangs.
Make sure the time switch isn't a smart switch which relies on a cloud platform to tell it to switch off and on again. Alternatively, buy a router which can be configured to reboot each day, such as Unifi's USG:
https://community.ui.com/questions/Auto-restart-US...
Note: USG does not have WiFi itself (the newer UDM has, I believe) - but a single access point will suffice.
The earlier poster's time switch is the cheapest option though!
https://community.ui.com/questions/Auto-restart-US...
Note: USG does not have WiFi itself (the newer UDM has, I believe) - but a single access point will suffice.
The earlier poster's time switch is the cheapest option though!
Dr Mike Oxgreen said:
Put the router on an electronic time switch that powers it off for a minute every night at 3am?
This with a mechanical timer: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=mechanical+timer+plug...nyt said:
This with a mechanical timer: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=mechanical+timer+plug...
Used to do that with WAPs when I worked in IT. Works well. TBH I'd replace the router. As others have said, mine never ever needs a reboot and I run a fully automated home with remote access.
Griffith4ever said:
nyt said:
This with a mechanical timer: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=mechanical+timer+plug...
Used to do that with WAPs when I worked in IT. Works well. 
Thanks everyone, some good ideas to look into. An automatic daily reboot is a fairly obvious solution really!
To be fair to the router (a TP-Link WDR-4900) it hardly ever causes an issue. It's probably been 9 or 10 months since it last had a blip and I think it's probably affected by the weather more than anything else - it's a coastal location and all the lines are overhead so storms seem to cause it problems. I'm also never sure if it's the router or the openreach fibre modem which is at fault as they both tend to get rebooted at the same time.
To be fair to the router (a TP-Link WDR-4900) it hardly ever causes an issue. It's probably been 9 or 10 months since it last had a blip and I think it's probably affected by the weather more than anything else - it's a coastal location and all the lines are overhead so storms seem to cause it problems. I'm also never sure if it's the router or the openreach fibre modem which is at fault as they both tend to get rebooted at the same time.
I use these for remote offices
https://www.amazon.com/3Gstore-Remote-Power-IP-Swi...
If the switch loses internet connectivity for a time (you configure) it will perform a power cycle. Saves having to go to an office out of hours to power cycle a router. We also use them for other equipment as a remote power switch, but the internet monitoring is a useful feature when you are dealing with Comcast...
https://www.amazon.com/3Gstore-Remote-Power-IP-Swi...
If the switch loses internet connectivity for a time (you configure) it will perform a power cycle. Saves having to go to an office out of hours to power cycle a router. We also use them for other equipment as a remote power switch, but the internet monitoring is a useful feature when you are dealing with Comcast...
Be aware that a broadband router regularly resetting will/may have an impact on your broadband speed, as the provider will see the line going down with regularity, deduce there's an issue, and probably back off the speed until it becomes stable over a period of time. They MIGHT be intelligent enough to realise that the signal to noise looks fine, there's no customer moaning, and it happens at 0100 every day, but dont bet on it 
Brother D said:
I use these for remote offices
https://www.amazon.com/3Gstore-Remote-Power-IP-Swi...
If the switch loses internet connectivity for a time (you configure) it will perform a power cycle. Saves having to go to an office out of hours to power cycle a router. We also use them for other equipment as a remote power switch, but the internet monitoring is a useful feature when you are dealing with Comcast...
I was going to post this -https://www.amazon.com/3Gstore-Remote-Power-IP-Swi...
If the switch loses internet connectivity for a time (you configure) it will perform a power cycle. Saves having to go to an office out of hours to power cycle a router. We also use them for other equipment as a remote power switch, but the internet monitoring is a useful feature when you are dealing with Comcast...
https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-accessories...
But I suspect yours is a better solution, as it doesn't require unifi management.
randlemarcus said:
Be aware that a broadband router regularly resetting will/may have an impact on your broadband speed, as the provider will see the line going down with regularity, deduce there's an issue, and probably back off the speed until it becomes stable over a period of time. They MIGHT be intelligent enough to realise that the signal to noise looks fine, there's no customer moaning, and it happens at 0100 every day, but dont bet on it
Power cycling shouldn't as the modem normally sends a power fail squawk so DLM doesn't kick in. As the line is VDSL it's a non issue anyway as DLM constantly runs. With the electronic timers you only need to set it to once a week anyway.Nimby said:
Raspberry Pi with a power-relay HAT, simple Python loop that pings an always-up remote address (say) once an hour, and toggles power to the router if it doesn't get a response.
This. You can probably assume Google.com will always resolve to something you can ping. If you had an openWRT powered router you just run the script on the router itself.
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