Island in Lake/Point to Point Wifi Bridge/Router Power Issue

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poyntz
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Island in Lake/Point to Point Wifi Bridge/Router Power Issue

Post by poyntz » Sat Jan 28, 2017 8:53 pm

Good Day:

My system involves two houses (one on land and one on an island in a lake 2km away) and a Point to Point Wi-Fi bridge made by GNS Wireless. The modem in house #1 has a static IP address which is used by the remote router in house #2 at the other end of the wifi bridge. The router in house #2 is set to this static IP address. The router in house #2 is effectively hard wired to the modem in house #1 through the bridge and LAN port.

When house #1 with the cable modem loses power (this happens frequently) the router in house #2 does not lose power as house #2 is off the grid and powered by batteries. When the power comes back to house #1 the wifi bridge reactivates just fine, but in order to have the wifi work in house #2 I must power cycle the router in house #2. This is a problem because I want to monitor systems in house #2 when I am away from both properties and the wifi is down in house #2 after a power failure until I reboot the modem. Is there a way to avoid the need to reboot the router? Is there another way to set this up?

Thanks, Ian
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Re: Island in Lake/Point to Point Wifi Bridge/Router Power I

Post by thechief » Tue Jan 31, 2017 8:22 am

poyntz wrote:Good Day:

My system involves two houses (one on land and one on an island in a lake 2km away) and a Point to Point Wi-Fi bridge made by GNS Wireless. The modem in house #1 has a static IP address which is used by the remote router in house #2 at the other end of the wifi bridge. The router in house #2 is set to this static IP address. The router in house #2 is effectively hard wired to the modem in house #1 through the bridge and LAN port.

When house #1 with the cable modem loses power (this happens frequently) the router in house #2 does not lose power as house #2 is off the grid and powered by batteries. When the power comes back to house #1 the wifi bridge reactivates just fine, but in order to have the wifi work in house #2 I must power cycle the router in house #2. This is a problem because I want to monitor systems in house #2 when I am away from both properties and the wifi is down in house #2 after a power failure until I reboot the modem. Is there a way to avoid the need to reboot the router? Is there another way to set this up?

Thanks, Ian
If your router #2 supports cron and scripting, set up a cron job that will ping Google's servers periodically (e.g., every hour or whatever), and, if it the ping is unsuccessful, then to reboot itself or restart its network interfaces.
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Re: Island in Lake/Point to Point Wifi Bridge/Router Power I

Post by poyntz » Tue Jan 31, 2017 11:42 pm

Thanks for the info Chief.

Do you know where one can buy a Router that will accept the script to run a cron job? For home use can you please recommend one?

Ian
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Re: Island in Lake/Point to Point Wifi Bridge/Router Power I

Post by thechief » Wed Feb 01, 2017 8:53 am

Perhaps your router #2 already does? Have you checked? Any router with a firmware based on Linux should be able to do it. Many firmwares are locked by the manufacturers, and so you might need 3rd party firmwares (eg, Tomato, Merlin, DDWrt). RouterTech firmwares support all this - but can only connect to another router/modem via an ethernet cable, or wirelessly via WDS.
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Re: Island in Lake/Point to Point Wifi Bridge/Router Power I

Post by poyntz » Thu Feb 02, 2017 5:52 pm

Hi Chief:

My router is a simple home router, Amped RTA 15. The company says none of their routers can handle script, but I am not sure the guy on the phone knew what he was talking about. I'd be happy to replace the router if I knew what to buy.
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Re: Island in Lake/Point to Point Wifi Bridge/Router Power I

Post by thechief » Thu Feb 02, 2017 7:23 pm

Well, there are literally hundreds of routers that can run crob jobs and connect wirelessly to another device. Much depends on whether you are willing and able to flash a 3rd party firmware if the manufacturer's firmware locks out those kinds of things. If so, then check out which routers are supported by Tomato or DDWRT.

I would not want to pick out one router from the hundreds that are available. Check the supported ones, then check their prices, hardware specs, etc. I personally use an Asus RT-N56U, running Padavan firmware. But that just happened to be the one I chose when my Broadband connection was upgraded.
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