EnvisaLink 4 Power Outage Concern Valid?

[Agrajag]

Grand and community,

I've been reading that the EnvisaLink (3 and below) have an issue if the power goes out to the router and/or modem in that it won't renew the IP lease for quite some time. Obviously, if accurate, this would potentially create a large hole in the system. I will be getting a UPS for the modem and router, however, I do want to understand this and see what I can do on my side, if anything.

First, does the EVL-4 address this by any chance?

Second, is there some setting that can be changed to make this less of an issue?

Is it a valid concern?

Thanks again.

[GrandWizard]

Hi there, tech support is not aware of any problem with any of the Envisalinks and I checked Envisacor's bugzilla page and there are no open issues.

Certainly install a UPS on all of your networking equipment in the case of an outage. The Envisalink get's it power from the security system so there is no worries there. It is all the rest of the network infrastructure in your home/business that you need to be worried about.

[user17600]

I and others have had experiences where if the EVL - in my case the 3 - keep power while the a portion of the network loses it, the EVL refuses to re-connect for some period of time after power is restored to the network.

I have a recent example from a property that is 130 miles away. The EVL3 is attached to the panel with that backup power and was set to a static IP, but the router lost power (for < 5min) and the EVL did not communication with the central station for 6 days. In another case at the same property, the connection was reestablished after about 7 hours. Neither of these is related to the lease time (of the EVL, or the router).

When this happens, the only sure way to reestablish connectivity is a cold reboot of the panel (because I can't just reboot the EVL due to it not responding via IP).

At my primary property I have the entirety of my network on UPS' - not only for the sake of the EVL but for other forms of communication - but that seems to be the only way I can preserve connectivity.

Others have reported setting a static IP on the EVL fixes this connectivity issue, but that has not been my experience.

GrandWiz, it would be most helpful if the firmware could be made to check for connectivity to the server and to reboot the device if connectivity isn't there for say, 15 mins or so. I can't imagine this would be complicated even for the small amount of memory on the device. And a reboot of the EVL does not appear to affect the function of the panel.

If you need me to open a formal ticket, I can - but this complaint has surfaced before, so it is real and for those of us who are hundreds of miles away from other properties, quite a pain. But overall the EVL experience outweighs the need for workarounds. Still if the issue could be addressed that would be the best possible outcome.

[K-Man]

I and others have had experiences where if the EVL - in my case the 3 - keep power while the a portion of the network loses it, the EVL refuses to re-connect for some period of time after power is restored to the network.

I have a recent example from a property that is 130 miles away. The EVL3 is attached to the panel with that backup power and was set to a static IP, but the router lost power (for < 5min) and the EVL did not communication with the central station for 6 days. In another case at the same property, the connection was reestablished after about 7 hours. Neither of these is related to the lease time (of the EVL, or the router).

When this happens, the only sure way to reestablish connectivity is a cold reboot of the panel (because I can't just reboot the EVL due to it not responding via IP).

At my primary property I have the entirety of my network on UPS' - not only for the sake of the EVL but for other forms of communication - but that seems to be the only way I can preserve connectivity.

Others have reported setting a static IP on the EVL fixes this connectivity issue, but that has not been my experience.

GrandWiz, it would be most helpful if the firmware could be made to check for connectivity to the server and to reboot the device if connectivity isn't there for say, 15 mins or so. I can't imagine this would be complicated even for the small amount of memory on the device. And a reboot of the EVL does not appear to affect the function of the panel.

If you need me to open a formal ticket, I can - but this complaint has surfaced before, so it is real and for those of us who are hundreds of miles away from other properties, quite a pain. But overall the EVL experience outweighs the need for workarounds. Still if the issue could be addressed that would be the best possible outcome.

What you are describing is a problem with either your switch or your router, not the Envisalink. The Envisalink continually tries to get a DHCP lease after reboot and upon expiry. It will do this forever so if the Envisalink cannot get a lease, it is a problem with the DHCP server.

In some cases we've seen wireless bridges fail to route broadcast packets (i.e. DHCP discovery packets) after a hard reboot. A warm-start of the bridges usually fixes the problem.

In other cases a router will no longer route UDP packets, after a power outage, of any device that isn't in its DHCP table. The Envisalink is programmed to give up it's lease if there has been no communication with the Envisacor reporting servers after 18 minutes. The device will further reboot at 20 minutes. These measures solve the problem. If you have this problem with your router, setting static IP is the absolute wrong thing to do as the Envisalink will never get into the DHCP table as you have set it to static IP. EDIT: The reboot of the Envisalink will be inhibited if you have an active device connected via the TPI.

With close to a quarter of a million devices in the field world-wide I'm confident that your problem is with your networking setup. I would start by changing back to DHCP and battery backing up your router. This still may not save you from spurious reboots of your router but it will certainly help. You could also try a different model of routers.

If you can get a network capture (PCAP file from wireshark) we will certainly look at it and help you work out your problem. Go through eyezon's support ticket system and say you have a PCAP file that you'd like an engineer to look at. I realize this may be hard if it is 100 miles away. Maybe try and simulate a power outage while you are there to see if you can force the behavior.

K

[user17600]

The Envisalink is programmed to give up it's lease if there has been no communication with the Envisacor reporting servers after 18 minutes. The device will further reboot at 20 minutes. These measures solve the problem. ... EDIT: The reboot of the Envisalink will be inhibited if you have an active device connected via the TPI.

This is terrific information which I don't recall seeing in any other post. Do you have an official source for this information that you can link to? Because this should be stickied someplace as a cautionary tale against static leases.

And is this true of setting a reserved ARP on the router rather than static IP on the device?

Thanks for contributing to the discussion, very informative.

[K-Man]

This is terrific information which I don't recall seeing in any other post. Do you have an official source for this information that you can link to? Because this should be stickied someplace as a cautionary tale against static leases.

And is this true of setting a reserved ARP on the router rather than static IP on the device?

Thanks for contributing to the discussion, very informative.

No, all we have is our issue tracking system and that we don't make public If you have an issue, just go to the tech support people and they can solve your problem.

As for your question about MAC reservation, no, having a reservation in DHCP by MAC is the same as regular DHCP in that the router is always in charge and aware of the client. That static IP setting on the Envisalink was really meant for paranoid sysadmins on corporate networks that see DHCP as a security risk.

K

[ludoo00]

Hello,

I just returned from vacation and my envisalink has been "offline" for the past 4 days due to a power outage. I received emails daily about the "EyezOn monitored device offline alert". To this day, I am still unable to reconnect the device. My Internet is working fine. I tried to reboot the device without any success. The alarm company did not even call me about the event. Makes me wonder about the safety of the system and the inability to reconnect the device to be "online" again after a power outage. Does anyone have any input about the situation and/or advice to reconnect the device?

[Agrajag]

Yes. As noted, submit a support ticket.

[GrandWizard]

Hello,

I just returned from vacation and my envisalink has been "offline" for the past 4 days due to a power outage. I received emails daily about the "EyezOn monitored device offline alert". To this day, I am still unable to reconnect the device. My Internet is working fine. I tried to reboot the device without any success. The alarm company did not even call me about the event. Makes me wonder about the safety of the system and the inability to reconnect the device to be "online" again after a power outage. Does anyone have any input about the situation and/or advice to reconnect the device?

Did you enter a support ticket? I don't see anything in the recent list about this and I see all tickets.

We are here to help you but if you don't tell us what is wrong we can't help you. Just posting on the forum won't help a problem that is specific to your installation.

[ludoo00]

My device is now reconnected. Turns out when rebooting my cable modem and router, I forgot to reconnect Envisalink. Still wondering about the issue due to the power outage though. I am thinking reconnection should occur automatically regardless of power outage/router issue.