The telecom optical modem cut off the power and restarted it every night for two years and saved 17 yuan. The light failure of my mother's machine doubled.

When I went back to my mother's house last fall, I found that she had a smart socket beside her bed, which automatically shut off the power at 11pm and turned on at 6am. When I asked her what it was used for, she said that the old sister downstairs said, "Electric appliances steal electricity when they are on standby. The red light on the optical modem flashes, and I don't know how much it consumes in a night." I calculated the account and showed it to her: The light modem has 6 watts of standby power and can be off for 7 hours a night, saving 15 kilowatt hours of electricity for a year, which is equivalent to more than eight yuan. Over the past two years, she has saved seventeen yuan.

What's the cost? When her optical modem was installed, I checked the bottom line, and the received optical power was -21.2dBm. A while ago, I took my phone into the backstage to see -26.4. It has increased by more than five dB in two years, directly touching the healthy red line of -27. However, my unit only increased by two or three dB during the same period. In the middle, it rose to -23.5 because the weak current box tie was too tight. After it was straightened out, it came back again. The light decay dropped to -27, and what was waiting for her was a disconnection and a repair call. A visit by the master would be enough to cut off the power for thirty years.

Of course, the power failure cannot be entirely blamed here - later the master came to investigate and found that the main reason was that the cover of the weak current box had pressed the pigtail into a dead bend. But the shock of electricity every night is indeed a real hidden damage to the laser in the optical modem. The root of this matter is that: Optical modems and routers are two completely opposite devices. . There are a lot of tutorials on how to regularly restart routers online, and if you copy them to the optical modem, you will spend money to buy a cure.

Make it clear first: Why can’t you copy the router’s restart and maintenance to Optical Mode?

There is a reason for routers to reboot periodically. The connection table running in the memory is getting fuller and fuller, and more and more devices are hung up. The firmware starts to get confused after running for hundreds of hours. Restarting it is like wiping the chopping board clean. My AX3000T automatically restarts every Wednesday at 4 o'clock in the morning. Specially set scheduled tasks , ran easily for two years.

The situation of optical modem is completely different. There is an optical fiber on its head, which does the work of photoelectric conversion. The core is a laser that shines towards the computer room all year round. When the router is powered off, the temporary data in the memory is cleared. ； When the optical modem is powered off, the optical path and registration status are changed. What they have to do after the power is cut off on both sides is not of the same order of magnitude.

One sentence summary: The router is a home appliance, and the optical modem is more like a precision instrument. Home appliances are easily turned off, and engineers don’t even bother to touch the power buttons of precision instruments.

First level account: Every time the power is cut off, the optical modem has to "report in" again

After the optical modem is powered on, it cannot be plugged in and used. It must first shine to greet the computer room. The computer room recognizes it in the user list, checks the "secret code" of SN or LOID, and then delivers the configuration. Finally, the PON light is always on before it is considered on duty. I have used this process before The article about PON lamp registration After being dismantled, it normally takes one to three minutes to walk at a time. When the computer room is busy, I start in ten minutes.

My mother's method of cutting off the power every night is equivalent to forcing optical modem to re-enter the company every morning. She didn't understand this, she just felt that "when I first woke up in the morning, the video call always went around in circles, but it would be fine after a while." She thought it was because I taught her to restart the router that it didn't take effect. In fact, during those few minutes, optical modem was waiting in line at the door of the computer room to check in.

What’s even more frustrating is that during the few minutes of registration, all the devices at home were disconnected from the Internet. The router is in a hurry, the mobile phone's WiFi is full and cannot open web pages, and smart home devices are popping up offline notifications one by one. My mother has four cameras at home, and four "device is offline" messages are sent to her mobile phone at six o'clock every morning on time. She once thought that the camera at home was broken and almost asked me to replace it with a new one.

Second level account: The laser is afraid of electric shock. Once every night, it will cause hidden damage.

This layer is the most easily overlooked. Huawei's corporate technical documentation clearly states that the two main causes of optical module failure are electrostatic damage and optical port pollution. Frequent power on and off will accelerate the degradation of laser performance. The laser is the heart of the optical modem. Every time the current surges when it is powered on, it records an account. Why does light decay increase year by year? The weakening of the laser's luminous power is due to internal factors, while the bent pigtail and dirty connectors are due to external factors. The two accounts have increased together.

The few dB increase in light attenuation of my mother's unit was caused by the box cover crimping. I think it was an external cause. But among the machines from the same batch and in the same community, the one I own is not powered off every day, and the light decay curve is much flatter. Putting the eight yuan saved in electricity and the risk of replacing the laser together, this deal is not worthwhile no matter how you calculate it. You can check whether the light has gone up or not, by using your mobile phone. 192.168.2.1 In the background, just look at the number of received optical power. -8 to -27 are considered healthy. I will write down the specific reading in The article about the decline of light Inside. Remember to check the base number on the day of installation, and check it once a year in the future. If the increase exceeds 5 dB, you should pay attention.

By the way, I have accompanied a few people to deal with the installation base numbers. The habit of copying them down on the same day can save countless things later. Which items should I copy? The article about installation and acceptance There is a list inside.

Third level account: It’s not just the internet that’s down, landlines and IPTV are also down.

In many homes, there are other things hanging under the bare cat. My home has IPTV, and my mother’s home has a landline. Landline is the most typical thing: Today's landline phones are no longer telephone lines. The phone is plugged into the TEL port of the optical modem and uses Internet voice. When the power is cut off, the phone becomes just a plastic board. Urgent calls cannot come in or out. This is The article about the phone number I was reminded repeatedly. If there are elderly people at home, this pitfall is much more serious than saving eight yuan on electricity bills.

The same is true for IPTV. The signal source of the set-top box is the VLAN on the optical modem. If the optical modem is powered off, the screen will be black, and even if the set-top box restarts by itself, it will be useless. There is a more hidden one: ITMS likes to push configurations and firmware down between two and five in the morning. You choose to turn off the power at 11pm and turn it on at 6am. Although the time is staggered, if the area push configuration happens one day and optical modem is not on duty, power on the next day and re-register, and the configuration is pushed down. The WiFi name you changed before may be covered by the standard template. I have the temper of ITMS The configuration was changed back to the article It has been written in that families who have changed bridges are especially afraid of its activities in the middle of the night.

Under what circumstances should a restart be made, and what is the gentlest way to restart it?

Having said that, it’s not like the optical modem can never move. There are four situations. Restart when it’s time to restart.:

Many people have been stumbled by the situation of arrears. The money has not been returned after paying for the Internet, thinking that they have to wait. In fact, the dial-up session of optical modem is stuck in the rejected state and will not heal itself. Just restart it. I wrote this in The article about suspension of network due to arrears The ending.

In terms of posture, soft restart is preferred. Enter through mobile phone or computer browser 192.168.2.1 , the ordinary useradmin account is enough. Find "Restart Device" in the "System" or "Management" menu and click on it. Soft restart skips the current impact of physical power outage. The optical module will not suffer once and the configuration will not be lost. If the power is really going to be cut off, wait 30 seconds after unplugging the socket to allow the capacitor inside to discharge before plugging it back in again. Do not unplug and plug in quickly. Don't rush to death after powering on. Give it one to three minutes to register. When the PON light is always on, start troubleshooting. If you don't understand the light language, turn on the LOS red light article comparison table.

ending: Leave smart sockets to routers, don’t install timers on optical modem sockets

The final modification at my mom’s house was very simple.: The smart socket was not thrown away, but moved from the optical modem to the router. It was set to restart every Wednesday morning, and both ends were comfortable. Plug the optical modem back into an ordinary socket and it will always be powered on. Two months later, I checked her house's light failure again, and the number was stable at -26.4 and did not go up any more. After the master pressed the line and processed it, it returned to around -24, and this was the end of the story. Clutter in the weak current box will aggravate the light path problem. I pay attention to storage. The article about sorting out weak current boxes It has been written in that the circle of the fiber is bigger than the fist.

There are only two occasions when you really need to cut off the power of your cat. One is a thunderstorm. Induction lightning comes in along the lines, and a set of equipment is burned. In this kind of weather, it is necessary to unplug the equipment, and the lightning protection account is The one about being struck by lightning Calculate it. The other one is to go away for half a month, unplug it to prevent accidents, plug it in when you come back and wait for a few minutes for it to register. In addition, you don’t have to worry about the electricity bill of optical modem. It’s twenty-nine yuan a year. I’m here The article about measuring electricity bills using a metering socket After actual testing, this thing is one of the most power-saving among all family network devices.

Give an order to finish: First, look at your habits. Do you have a regularly scheduled power-off socket hanging on the optical modem? If so, remove it. ； Look at the numbers again, go to the backstage and copy the light attenuation number and record it in your phone. ； On the router side, Scheduled restart As usual, don’t extend your itchy hands to the optical modem ； If it is really stuck, soft restart will take priority, and power outage will take second place. The best way to take care of this equipment is to leave it alone.