Hello!
I wanted to create this post to see if I can get an answer, as google seems to give mixed results. This winter, I was thinking of getting a small generator incase our power goes out. We live in a rural area, so I have propane for heat, but was more worried about keeping devices charged and some lights.
I was curious if we had a power outage, if I powered my modem- would I still be able to have internet access? We have Xfinity but I wasn’t sure if there is a total power outage, if the internet would go down either until the local system is brought back up or if it had batteries/self generators so the network stays up during an outage.
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I went through this same thing. I bought an APC uninterruptible power supply and keep the modem and router plugged into. Also routing coaxial and Ethernet cables through it so it is 100% connected to the PSU. if power went out we were still able to maintain internet and charge our devices for several hours. However this is negated if there is an outage with your ISP. So yes and no. But for my experience it has been mostly yes to having Internet during a power outage.
Yes tell the ISPs equipment backups fail. My Comcast service runs for about an hour after power loss then the connection drops.
I live in a relatively dense suburban neighborhood. We have had extended power outages In our area, and I can tell you for a fact, our phone company apparently has battery backup capability at our DSLAM that lasts about 12 hours. If an outage goes longer than that, they can attach a trailer-mounted generator to power it, (as long as they keep it fueled)
During the great northeast blackout, I saw a Comcast truck parked next to a little worksite generator (probably 500-1000 watts) chained to the pole, I assume it was powering a signal amplifier on the pole.
It depends on your ISP but it’s likely.
I have a huge propane generator for extended outages… The UPS systems I have now will keep things powered for over 3 hours with full load, but I have non-critical devices power off after 10 minutes and that extends the batteries to ~12 hours.
Still, if the power is out for 40 minutes, the generator kicks on and takes over. Internet stays up and with two 1000 gal tanks, I can run the generator for months without refueling at full load. Having the extended runtime batteries allows for generator maintenance windows and such.
My experience has been:
- Coax connections will just stop. These rely on boosters and repeaters that are powered by the grid.
- Cable TV will work for an hour or two.
- VoIP phones will last until the UPS battery dies.
- Cellular will work, but will be bogged down and possibly revert to older, slower modes.
So your cellular hotspot is your best bet during a regional power outage, but be aware that even this will be slower than normal and may even stop working after hours or days, as cell sites lose backup power.
Depends. Our local coax service goes out when we lose power.
When the power goes out the connection point goes down so I lose internet acceess
My xfinity modem/router does not have a built in battery backup. I have it plugged in a 500VA UPS. It will run for many hours after a power outage. That is the only device plugged into the UPS.
I live in N GA and this last summer, we had a storm that took out power for two days.
We have AT&T fiber Internet service.
I had a portable generator running, principally, so we didn’t lose our refrigerated and frozen food. It also powered the fiber modem, the Internet modem, my router, Wi-Fi A.P. and everything critical in my home office. The Internet worked just fine…but we were lucky. The same storm took out a lot of infrastructure that provides comm to our area. AT&T fiber was not affected (presumably because it is largely in the ground).
I was in the middle of that storm and yes ATT worked once they repaired the fiber, but Xfinity was mostly out for much longer. They even put their generators in our neighborhood to power their amplifiers.
Since I think most cable providers now provide phone over cable, they are generally pretty good about having service in an outage for the purpose of emergency services. And many of the combined data/voice modems they offer have battery backup options as well specifically for this purpose.
Comcast might work. Most of their infrastructure has small battery backups, but will eventually go down after a few hours. For long term outages they will send out techs to hook up generators to bring the infrastructure back online. But for outages that last for less than a day, the internet will stop working after a few hours.
Maybe.
I have UPSs on my home gear and a generator, but out of the last 2 places I’ve lived…one had about 4 hours of battery backup on the ISP equipment along the roads, the other seems to have zero backup power (and sent out an email point blank saying if power is out in the area expect internet to go out even if your house still has power)
Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the ISP network. I have Verizon fiber and it is up during outages. My entire rack is on a UPS and the AP’s are powered by a PoE switch on the same UPS, so I have Wifi for about 50 minutes when power goes out.
If you have cellular/5g during an outage you will also have a landline connection
What matters is the internet provider’s power.
I’ll give an example. A few years back there was a widespread blackout in California. My neighborhood had power, the adjacent neighborhood lost power for about a week. The cable service (Comcast/Xfinity) runs their lines on polls in this neighborhood, and I could see easily that they run from my neighborhood into that adjacent neighborhood. By the next day apparently their battery backup ran out, and my cable internet went down until that adjacent neighborhood got its power restored even though my power never went down.
If you put your gateway, switches, routers, access points, etc. on a UPS? Sure. Assuming whatever equipment comcast sends the service to your home also has power… if it’s a wide enough outage, it may not.