[ale] SNMP and DSL modem question

[Paul D. Manno]

On Fri, 26 Oct 2001, John Mills wrote:

> ALErs -
> 
> The recent discussion of Telocity (worse service by the day!) and
> Roadrunner modems has brought me a question:
> 
> Could I set up an SNMP agent to send a 'restart' trap to my Telocity
> "Gateway" (ASDL modem)? I know nothing about the modem, but more and more
> frequently I must reboot it by cycling power, in order to re-establish my
> access to the net.
> 
> Some people have attacked this problem by putting the modem on an outlet
> controlled from their computer and cycling power when net-access appears
> to be lost, but if the modem provided a 'restart' trap my Linux box could
> hit, that seems cleaner.
> 
> Comments?

I'm just another Telocity DSL customer.  First off, the reliable word I've 
heard is that it's not strictly a Telocity problem.  However, I have run 
across the same thing as it comes and goes.  After being away for a week 
and having had the connection die, I finally did what you may want.  I do 
note that my service is much better recently...

I run a two shell scripts to check the status of the connection using 
your choice of ping, traceroute or similar to the DSLAM address.  If it's 
down for more than N minutes, I use one of those little X-10 firecracker 
(serial) modules contorlling an X-10 appliance (non-dimmable) power module 
to power cycle to the DSL gateway.  Some care was put in so it tries to 
not madly power cycle the box after it's power cycled it once.

If folks really want the hacked together script, I can send it with the 
warning that it's functional but not very "pretty".  It could be done 
much more effeciently with one (much nicer) script and a little time.  
They do log their events to a file for review.

I've found if you continue to have near daily problems with the connection 
that a call to Telocity (DirectTV DSL) customer support will get you a new 
gateway and return postage for the old one.

Let me know what y'all want.

-- Paul


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