Hi NANOG mailing list,
I am a graduate student, currently conducting research on how power outages affect home Internet users. I know that the FCC has a regulation since 2015 (47 CFR Section 9.20) requiring ISPs to provide an option to voice customers to purchase a battery backup for emergency voice services during power outages. As this is only an option and only applies to customers who subscribe to voice services, I was wondering if anyone had any insights on the prevalence of battery backup for home modem/routers? I.e., what percentage of home users actually install a battery backup in their home modem/router or use an external UPS?
Thanks.
Scott
Reference for 47 CFR Section 9.20: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-A/part-9/subpart-H/section-9.20
Given that most people barely even know what their home router is, I suspect the percentage would be somewhere south of 1 percent. Outside of my home, I honestly cannot recall EVER seeing someone’s home using a battery backup for their internet infrastructure.
I personally do, but of course I (and probably everyone on this list) am by no means representative of the population at large in this particular area.
Given that most people barely even know what their home router is, I suspect the percentage would be somewhere south of 1 percent. Outside of my home, I honestly cannot recall EVER seeing someone’s home using a battery backup for their internet infrastructure.
Same here. The only people I’ve seen that have battery backups for their home routers are fellow geeks. I even bought one and shipped it to my ~70-year-old mother…and she just doesn’t want to install it. “Too complicated”.
I personally do, but of course I (and probably everyone on this list) am by no means representative of the population at large in this particular area.
Same. My home office has 3 Cyberpower 2500 VA double-conversion UPS units backed by Champion transfer switches. Power goes out, and ~45 seconds later I’m running on generator power.
My local ISP runs out of power well before I do. Thankfully there’s Starlink.
Short of an asteroid hitting my office, it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever be offline. 
-A
At my last employer we installed lots of Adtrans at Car Dealerships, Hotels, and other SMBs. It was common for them to have a small UPS but 9 times out of 10 the UPS 2-3 times older than the life cycle of the battery and no one ever knew that you could change the battery in them. So they usually just had a heavy power strip that was prone to failing after a power loss.
We did have the option to install a battery back up on the Adtran but it would have been useless because most of them didn’t have any kind of backup power for their PBXs.
I’m pretty sure that my own power protection on my network gear and theater gear far exceeded the average end user’s remote offices.
-richey
Don't underestimate the disaster that is PG&E in California. We have a generator so don't really need battery backup for the router, but we're lucky since their DSLAM is battery backed up from the CO. Lots of cable users are not so lucky as they found out when PG&E started routinely having blackouts so they don't burn the state down. This shows why MSO should have the same mandate as telcos for battery backup to their headends.
Mike
I too see very little gear protected by a UPS. In nicaragua, even,
when I lived there, and the power flickered 6x times a day, "normal"
people just accepted it.
However, with the huge implosion of battery costs and increase in
power from the cellphone revolution, and how little power most home
routing gear uses (usually under 6w) it really does strike me
as plausible we could see a capable battery land in more home routing
gear as a feature more users might buy, and not just for backup
telephony..
Need to look at the entire infrastructure. Now, its less about backup for the hardwired router, and better utility backups and construction for mobile provider infrastructure.
Almost all households have at least one mobile phone, with built-in battery backup 
We used to have public pay telephones for people without phones in their homes, but not anymore.
Landline telephone - 40% households (70% in 2010, and 96% in 2000)
Smart speakers - 50% households (introduced in 2014)
Cellular smartphone - 80% households (34% in 2010, introduced 2007)
- yes, I know, the first smartphone was 1994, but the modern smartphone
was introduced in 2007.
Cellular phone (anytype) - 97% households (80% in 2010, 55% in 2000)
- older and poorer people have 'dumb' cell phones - WEA doesn't reach
everyone.
That might be good for transient glitches, but with real power outages it begs the question of everything else that needs power. We deal with days long outages all of the time because of PG&E, so the router being powered is just a small piece of the equation.
Mike
When I subscribed to Windstream fiber at my house a couple years ago I didn’t order voice service but they installed a UPS anyway. Curiously, they also connected the wires meant for voice lines to their outdoor equipment mounted on the house. The guy told me he did that after he hooked it up which I was mildly annoyed about since I had planned to use that cable for other reasons. He was pushing voice service and said I was hooked up for voice should I want to do this in the future. I’m unsure if this is a standard Windstream install or what.
To add to that, I have my own UPS installed on some of my indoor equipment.. router, one WiFi AP, Synology file server, x86 linux server. While we almost never lose power at my house, yesterday we lost power for 7 minutes. I maintained Internet connectivity throughout the brief outage.
Ryan Wilkins
In my case (California, home of SCE and PG&E), we have been notified by our electrical grid operators that power can go down at any time, for any reason, and any duration. I have just moved, so I am speaking in a historical context and future plans, but we have solar electricity as well and have a battery in the home that in effect backs up part of the house. We don't back up the Internet service, because frankly if power is down in the grid I'm not sure my favorite router is all that important, in addition to the considerations already mentioned. But power can and does go down - even without asteroids.
I’m one of the atypical users, when compared to the population at large, but probably in line for this audience.
Critical gear is on a transfer switch and both inputs to that come from UPSs that are on separate circuits. Less critical gear is fed from one UPS or the other to balance the load and allow headroom for a load shift due to a UPS failure. My office gear is on a separate UPS on a different circuit.
Thank you
jms
We just installed a battery too, but it will probably only last ~1 day and much less than that in winter. We're in the process of looking at a generator that interfaces directly with the inverter so that it handles the grid, the battery, the solar and the generator along with the transfer switch. It's gone from being the occasional nuisance in the winter to all year long these days. Our power outage over the holidays lasted 12 days. This isn't just a rural problem anymore in California, it's a pretty much everywhere problem now.
Mike
Hi,
services, I was wondering if anyone had any insights on the prevalence of
battery backup for home modem/routers? I.e., what percentage of home users
actually install a battery backup in their home modem/router or use an external
UPS?
Given that most people barely even know what their home router is, I suspect the
percentage would be somewhere south of 1 percent. Outside of my home, I
honestly cannot recall EVER seeing someone’s home using a battery backup for
their internet infrastructure.
Same here. A small UPS that will keep my modem, router, and POE for APs alive for
the time I need to run outside and hook up my generator when PG&E decides to cut
the power again. A bigger UPS for the small 19" rack that hosts some stuff.
Top Gear Top Tip: I also have a UPS on my garage door opener. That saves the
misses from dealing with manually opening/closing the garage door if I'm not
at home.
Thanks,
Sabri
“Top Gear Top Tip: I also have a UPS on my garage door opener. That saves the
misses from dealing with manually opening/closing the garage door if I’m not
at home.”
Keeping one’s spouse happy is FAR more important than keeping a router or modem online.
Many times those coincide.
Do we know if there are common reasons why these power outages are on the rise across different states and if this is expected to continue ?
Ahmed
Great idea on the garage opener. I got a new one a year ago with an integrated battery for exactly that purpose. And, although I didn’t realize it when I bought it, it also lets me tie it to Amazon so they can open the door, leave my packages inside, and close the door. No more porch pirates!
-Andy
Do we know if there are common reasons why these power outages are on the rise across different states and if this is expected to continue ?
Climate change. We're living it. That and PG&E is corrupt.
Mike
Armchair quarterbacking here:
Increasing
From what I've seen on the market, home router or "residential gateway" devices with built-in battery backup typically only provide backup for FXS style analog POTS services, not for data, wireless, etc.
So, if you both pay for your ISP's analog phone service and still own an analog phone, it will work for a while. Nothing else will. This assumes that your local cable company both has battery-backed trunk amplifiers and that they service the batteries regularly. Many don't.
It's an FCC requirement to provide the ability to make emergency voice calls during a local power outage. This is an attempt to emulate the "good old days" when twisted-pair phone service with central office battery was the norm.
Speaking for myself, my networking gear is UPS-backed and my house has a Generac auto-start generator and ATS.
Most of our customers don't back up their home network gear. If they do it's most often an under-desk style UPS with 15-minute runtime that hasn't been serviced in a decade. Its battery is very much dead and so swollen that it can't be replaced without the use of some serious prying tools.