How can I be rescued remotely if my WiFi is cut off at home at work? Real record of Xiaomi router disconnecting and restarting. I went through the pitfalls that the App couldn’t remove one by one.

One Wednesday last month, I was having a regular afternoon meeting at the company, and my mother-in-law sent a voice message, her voice was shaking.: The WiFi at home was gone, the surveillance camera couldn't be seen, and her grandson's tablet couldn't be connected. She asked if it had been struck by lightning. There were indeed thunderstorms here in those days. My first reaction was that it was over, something happened to the hardware.

Later, it took me 40 minutes to complete the remote processing, and I found that not a single hair on the router was broken. It was just that the optical modem was broken for a while, and the router could not keep up with the rhythm. But in the past forty minutes, I stepped on three pitfalls, each of which would make someone who doesn't understand give up on the spot and report for repairs directly. Today, I wrote down the complete path of "A person who was away from home rescuing a Xiaomi router at home", clearly marking which steps can be saved and which steps look like they can be saved but are not.

Pour cold water on it first: The router is really out of supply, and no one can remotely save it.

Before taking action, let’s recognize a physical fact. If you want to operate the router remotely, the instructions must have a way to reach it.: Either go outside the Internet and enter Mijia Cloud and then deliver it to the router, or there is a device that is still alive in your home LAN to handle it for you. When the Internet is disconnected at home, what is often disconnected is the "external network path" itself, and commands cannot enter at all.

I have divided three levels into three levels for "people who are out of town and are disconnected from the Internet at home". Different levels have completely different rescue methods. In the first level, the WiFi at home is actually alive, but it can't connect to the external network - this is the most common, and the mother-in-law is the one. The phone is still connected to WiFi and can access 192.168.31.1 , but the webpage cannot be opened because the superior link is broken. In the second level, the WiFi is completely gone, my name cannot be found in the mobile phone list, the router is down or has a power outage. The third level is the easiest. If the router indicator light does not light up, there is something wrong with the power supply or the machine itself.

Among these three levels, the first level is the best to save, the second level depends on luck, and the third level depends on the hands of the family when the gods come. So the first step is never to take out your phone and click on the app, but to ask your family to help you sort the files.: Check to see if the name is still in the WiFi list of the mobile phone, and see whether the router light is on and what color it is. Asking clearly in one sentence will save half an hour of detours later.

Remote restart first: Mijia App can really save you

Assigned to the first level, the most typical scenario is that the router is stuck in a semi-dead state after the superior interrupts.: The WiFi is there, but the data doesn’t go out. Just restart this way. The problem is that you can't touch the machine when you're in the company. The plug is in a two-meter-high weak current box, and the mother-in-law can't reach it even with a stool.

At this time, the value of Mijia App comes out. After the router is connected to Mijia, although the external network is disconnected, does the connection between it and your mobile phone use the cloud channel plus the router's own 4G heartbeat mechanism? No, you have to tell the truth here: The remote commands of the Mijia App go through the external network channel. If the Internet is disconnected at home, it will most likely not be transmitted. The router in the App will most likely be displayed as offline. . When I opened Mijia that time, the router was indeed gray. I clicked the restart button and circled it. After half a minute, the message "Device offline, operation failed" popped up.

Don’t call the app useless yet. There is a function in offline mode that saved me with real money: Scroll down the device details page, and there is a column of read-only information such as "Troubleshooting" or signal strength. Some models still have the status last reported before going offline, and you can see when it was disconnected. This point in time is critical - by matching the time when the circuit breaker in your home tripped, you can confirm that it was the pot that had the flash. ； If you are not right, it means there is another reason. Don’t waste time on this road.

The situation where the Mijia route really works is when the home network is not completely disconnected, but a certain function of the router is stuck. For example, the WiFi is still there and the external network is open, but there are a few devices that cannot be connected. At this time, the App is alive and you can click restart in the toolbox, which is much faster than logging in from a remote web page. My family said, "The Internet is as slow as a crawl." You just click on it at the company, and within two minutes they will reply with a message saying it's done. I have written an article about this kind of operation collection of "the network is still there but something is not right". Xiaomi router mobile phone remote management , the entrances for changing passwords and kicking device speed limits are all there, which complements the "Internet disconnection rescue" in this article.

Alternate road in first gear: Check your neighbor’s website 31.1

Don’t panic if the app is offline. There is a second way to the first level. This way is more circuitous but effective in actual tests. The router WiFi is still alive, which means that its LAN function is not dead, but it can't get out of the external network. The remote command of Mijia App cannot be accessed because it is bypassed from the external network. ； But if you can get in from the intranet, you can still operate it.

The problem is that if a person is not at home, how can he access his home network? The situation in my family is that the mother-in-law’s mobile phone is connected to the home WiFi, so the mobile phone is in your hand. Remotely guide her to do this step: When the phone is connected to the WiFi at home, the browser clicks 192.168.31.1 , enter the management password to enter the background, and look at the WAN port column on the routing status page. Normal people would get stuck at this point in the performance. Asking an elderly person to find the status of the WAN port is equivalent to asking her to be on duty in the computer room. My approach is to minimize movement: She was only asked to look at one place, the line of large characters at the top of the backstage home page, which said "Connected" or "Connecting".

「"Connecting" is going around in circles. Leave your phone on that page and wait. The WAN port of the Xiaomi router has an automatic redial mechanism when the upper level is disconnected. Normally, it will be dialed back within a minute or two. The mother-in-law waited for three minutes and the word changed, and the network was fully accessible. If the judgment is not accurate, please cooperate with another article I wrote. What should I do if the Xiaomi Mesh sub-router is out of network? According to the symptom classification method here, circling in circles and no signal at all are two diseases, so don’t treat them at the same time.

If it's still spinning after five minutes, ask a family member to manually click restart in the background - not unplug the power, but the restart button in the upper right corner of the web page, or ask her to try restarting the toolbox while connected to WiFi using the mobile app (it is a local channel at this time and does not rely on the external network, so it can be clicked). If the number is still not dialed after restarting, the problem lies with the upstream, optical modem or operator. See the next step.

The second level of native methods: Command the power outage and call back again from a distance

In the second level, WiFi is completely gone, and Mijia and the web backend are completely useless because the router is lying on its own. The only solution at this time is to physically cut off the power and restart it, and the only way to do the work is to borrow the hands at home. Don't be embarrassed to give orders. The technical content of this job is all in your mouth. If you say the wrong thing, your ten minutes' work will be in vain.

I'll read it to you in standard speech.: 「There is a small black plug next to the router. Follow the cord to the wall socket, unplug the plug, wait for thirty seconds, and then plug it back in. 」Don’t skip these three details: Counting thirty seconds is to allow time for the capacitor to discharge. Sometimes the machine does not wake up cleanly when fast plugging and unplugging while the power is on, and it has to be done again. ； Don't check the WiFi immediately after plugging it back in. Xiaomi AX3000T takes one minute and fifty seconds from power on to WiFi connection. I checked the stopwatch and found that it did six things in sequence. The whole process is in that article How long does it take to get online after restarting the router? It has been dismantled inside. If you go to connect it in advance, you will only get lonely. ； If the socket is in a weak current box or is plugged into a power strip, first make sure that the power strip switch is not accidentally touched. I have encountered this problem twice.

The trick of turning off the power and then calling again is a surefire solution for machines with stuck software, but there are two types of situations it cannot cure. One is that the power adapter itself is broken. If you plug it back in and the light still doesn't come on, then you need to check for that black brick. The voltage of Xiaomi models is not universal. The AX3000T is 12V. Using a mobile phone charger will burn the machine. This is a pitfall for me. The power adapter article Written in detail. The other type is that a lightning strike or surge has damaged the router body, and the light does not light up or flashes randomly. Then it is time to send it for inspection or replace it. Don’t let family members plug and unplug it repeatedly.

Aftermath after the call: Don't be too happy too early, there are still people who can get ahead of you

Don't rush to call it a day once the Internet is connected. A rude operation like turning off the power and then calling again will trigger a series of chain reactions, each of which is waiting for you to deal with the aftermath.

The first is time. The router has no battery and the system time resets to zero after a power outage. It has to rely on NTP to re-adjust the time. Before the time adjustment is completed, all functions linked to time will be wrong.: Scheduled network disconnection is not implemented, child control periods drift, and automatic restart calculates the wrong day. The next day at my house, my son’s tablet was still able to access the Internet at 11pm. When I checked, I found that the router time was still at the factory default. The principle and method of time calibration are here How to adjust the router time if it is wrong Li said it thoroughly. So half an hour after the call comes, ask your family members to go into the background or take a look at the app to confirm that the time is correct before leaving.

The second one is smart devices jumping the gun. Before the router woke up, some fast-acting devices woke up first. They couldn't get the address before DHCP was activated, so they programmed themselves a placeholder number starting with 169.254, and then it got stuck on this number. It showed that a certain device was offline and everything else was fine. Disposal is simple: Just cut off the power to that one unit and restart it once. Don't unplug the whole family one by one. A complete set of procedures and reasons is here Smart devices collectively go offline after power outage In that article, my house was actually cleaned up in that order in five minutes.

The third one is IP drift. After the power is turned off and restarted, the order of DHCP sending is messed up. The printers and NAS that were fixed on a certain path may have changed addresses, and the mounting and port forwarding will be interrupted. Not every company has this problem. The sign of it is "Network is connected but a certain device cannot be found." The fundamental solution is to bind a fixed IP to the resident device. 192.168.31.1 It's a matter of two steps, follow Xiaomi router device fixed IP Do it once, and you will be immune to this problem when the power is cut off and restarted.

ending: A rescue sequence table with numbers by gear

Condensate this forty minutes into a table. Call me again when you get home next time. Break into groups before taking action. Don’t remotely command to unplug the phone as soon as you get up.:

In addition to the third level, there are two more preventive measures. These are the lessons I gave to my mother-in-law’s family after this time. One is to set up an automatic restart for the router in the early morning every week to reduce the probability of getting stuck. Set the path in The article about Xiaomi restarting regularly Here, there are two channels, Mijia App and web backend. ； The other is to clearly write down the management password and stick it on the door of the weak current box. Ten of the forty minutes during the rescue were spent on "the password sticker cannot be found". This kind of low-level loss can be avoided. There is a limit to remote capabilities, but these few steps within the limit have gone smoothly, and 90% of the "home disconnected calls" do not need to ask for leave to go home.