Land line power control?

[DANR]

We have a WiFi thermostat in our cabin, which is wonderful - until the DSL goes down. Usually it's just a matter of rebooting the modem to get the internet back up, but I can't do that if I am 200 miles away. I am thinking that if I had a switched receptacle that I could control over the land line, I could reboot the modem remotely. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[rundrave]

if I call my ISP tech support there is an option to (press 2) to have them automatically reboot my modem. If they can automate that I would also expect a quick phone call to your ISP's tech support they would be able to restart it from there end?

I also have cable internet so maybe with DSL that is not option?

[DANR]

Wish I had your ISP. Every time I call mine, they insist that I have to be at the location to help them troubleshoot the problem. I think I may buy a 7 day timer and set it to power off and on the modem once a week.

 

Thanks

[delcecchi]

My DSL at the cabin and cable internet at home never need to have the modem reset, nor the router either.  Actually the cabin has a combo modem/wireless router...  

There is something wrong with the modem if it needs to be reset all the time.  

[Jim Almquist]

One way would be to put the modem on a light timer and power it down once a day for 5 minutes to force a reboot.

[delcecchi]

https://www.remotepowerswitch.com/rps2.htm

http://www.ambery.com/2phrepduposw.html

 

Who is the carrier and what kind of modem? 

[DANR]

Thanks for the suggestions. I am heading up this weekend, and will hopefully figure out what is going on. For now, I'm going to set up a 7 day light timer to cycle the modem. In the longer term, we will be looking for an alternate provider.

Dan 

[DANR]

Update: Got there Thursday evening, powered the modem down then back up and had inet. The bad news - it quit twice more during the weekend. TDS insisted on sending a tech out, so we will see what happens Friday. Hopefully he will swap out the modem. 

[delcecchi]

I hope they figure out the problem.   When I had that with charter here in Rochester, it turned out to be a poor job of putting the connector on the cable where it went into the house.  There was a little piece of foil shielding intermittently shorting out the cable inside the connector.  All from a half arsed job of installation in the first place.  

[rundrave]

I was having issues with my ISP service recently same symptoms. I work from home and it kept randomly dropping and just got worse and worse. They sent a tech out and he redid all the cable terminations and also switched out some connection in the cable underground and he said they can go bad over time and I haven't had any issues since.

They should be able to measure signal strength and know right away when they are onsite if you have any issues.

[Tom7227]

When I had my internet service through the phone company it would go kaflooey every fall.  The guys would come out and clear out the mouse nests in the junction box out front.  The house was built in 65 and the phone line is underground.  One guy spent a lot of time out here and finally concluded that the underground line was shot and it would require mega screwing around to replace it.  He then came into the house and said that the phone lines run throughout the house were also shot and would have to be redone.  I switched to getting service from the cable company rather than having to spend so much to get things squared away.

[DANR]

UPDATE 2       The TDS tech was a good one. He found some cracked wiring outside the house that may have been getting moisture in it. He also isolated one wire in the cable to the modem to eliminate noise from the rest of the house's wires. He explained that 10 years ago when the house was built, all they needed to worry about was dial tone. If that doesn't do the trick, he will come back and run new wire from outside to the modem. So far (knock on wood) so good........