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We tested how our new whole house battery backup works with our Sonic fiber networking equipment by switching off access to the grid and it works - sorta. Since it can take a few seconds for the battery to take over, our fiber equipment goes down. After the battery switches on, the ONT boots back up within a minute or so. Meanwhile, the router is patiently looking for the signal from the ONT which it soon finds and our broadband is up and running. However, the ATA re-boots immediately after the power returns and before the router is back up so, of course, it doesn't find a signal and just quits. To get the ATA back, I have to unplug the power for a few seconds.

The documentation for the ATA states that it periodically "registers with our network on an hourly basis". Based on this declaration, all I have to do after a power outage is wait up to one hour for the ATA to re-register, ie. no unplug-replug. Is this true? It sure would be nice to not have to do that manual intervention.

After a power outage it may take the ATA 45-60 minutes to register. Once the ONT has finished rebooting you can power cycle the ATA again to attempt a faster re-register.

The ATA is designed to register without being power cycled but you can speed up the process with a power cycle.

david.c wrote:After a power outage it may take the ATA 45-60 minutes to register. Once the ONT has finished rebooting you can power cycle the ATA again to attempt a faster re-register.

That has not been my experience as of several months ago. The ATA does not re-register if the modem reboots and the ATA is either still online or they rebooted at the same time (simply because the ATA finishes rebooting well before the modem gets a signal).

Here's my experience with FX1 (resold ATT fiber). Modem got a FW update and the modem rebooted. ATA was still on. I had forgotten about the update and went to bed and forgot to reboot the ATA. When I woke up 7-8 hours later the ATA was still unregistered. A manual reboot using ***999 got it registered again.

I suggest you speak with your voice team and ensure the ATA's firmware is updated to ping your voice gateway every 5-10 minutes--not 45-60--then re-register if it is not. Sonic espouses the value and importance of a land line (and while many young bucks don't agree due to them having cells, I value mine) please keep disruptions to a minimum.

nweninger wrote:We tested how our new whole house battery backup works with our Sonic fiber networking equipment by switching off access to the grid and it works - sorta. Since it can take a few seconds for the battery to take over, our fiber equipment goes down.

What kind of backup do you have? Your experience suggests one needs to have an online UPS for a truly seamless transition.

As stated, we have a "whole house" backup system. That is, the battery takes over if the grid goes down. With this system, we had hoped to dispense with a UPS, particularly since a reasonably priced UPS would not provide backup for the many hours or days we seem to be experiencing.

The ultimate solution is a UPS and our backup system. But as of now, instead of overloading on gizmos, I am willing to accept the minor inconvenience of a temporarily absent ATA. Hopefully, the technology will soon advance to where we want it.

I meant what brand.

We have solar and felt battery backup was not mature and I want to be aware of brand behavior when we eventually get a whole house backup.

Thanks.

EarthWise Energy (earthwiseenergysolutions.com) did our battery installation here in Marin County. We highly recommend them. We have had solar panels since 2007 installed by Sky Power Systems out of San Ramon so our new installation was to add the battery, an LG Chem RESU10H. The existing inverter was replaced and a backup interface was added, both from SolarEdge. External emergency system disconnects were added per code.

As I said in the original post, we have attempted to test the systems by turning off the grid via that emergency disconnect with mixed results. We do get backup, no problem, but, again as the original post describes, the transition is not smooth. One caveat here is that we have the newest systems from SolarEdge, out just this summer, so some glitches are to be expected (40 years in the computer biz has taught me that expectation). We will be doing more testing.

Hello,

The ATA is very sensitive to any kind of power fluctuation and will go offline with the slightest "hiccup" in power flow. It would be recommended that you connect your AT&T RG and the ATA into a surge protector to guard against inconsistent power flow. I myself use a UPS/surge protector and also have Solar by V3 Electric. I have a battery backup system and during an outage my system barely flickers but it's enough to take down my ATA as well. The UPS backups are the best for this since it's in the name "Uninterruptible Power Supply". This would stop the issue with the transition from grid to battery since there would be a consistent flow to the ATA and modem/router then. I have my entire workstation plugged into mine for this exact reason since it "cushions" the transition and I don't have an interruption at all. I hope this helps. Let us know how it goes!


Kind Regards,

Jeff M.

While I'm generally happy with Sonic service, we've found the phone service unreliable. Any power glitch causes the ATA to drop it's connection, and we have no phone service until we notice that it's out and manually reboot the ATA. I've put the ATA and modem on a UPS and a power filter, but it still drops once a month or so. It's very annoying.

klui wrote:The ATA does not re-register if the modem reboots and the ATA is either still online or they rebooted at the same time (simply because the ATA finishes rebooting well before the modem gets a signal).

Good news about ATA behavior. Yesterday I had to reboot my modem and left the ATA alone. The ATA re-registered within 5 minutes after the internet connection came up.

Kudos Sonic for making this change!