Wifi restart switches?

Does anyone have experience with an automatic router restart plug/switch so when your router is down it will start up automatically again?

Not sure what you mean? Most routers will restart anyway if you have a power cut. unless you mean something that will shut down the router and the restart it.
some routers have that built in, My TPO link archer ax53 have a reboot schedule in the system menu, but not really sure why anyone would want it.

My router is a Squirrel provided router connected to the fibre heroes line. Sometimes the router drops the signal and need to be rebooted Imwas told there are plugs/switches that can automatically reboot? But I am not technical

By "drop the signal" do you mean that the Wi-Fi stops broadcasting, or that the connection to the Internet stops working?

I guess you could setup something that would ping a public IP address of the router (from external) and if no ping was received then it would send a command to a smart plug that powers off and then on the router. Might be something that If This Then That could do with a cheap smart plug?

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

Not sure what you mean? Most routers will restart anyway if you have a power cut. unless you mean something that will shut down the router and the restart it.
some routers have that built in, My TPO link archer ax53 have a reboot schedule in the system menu, but not really sure why anyone would want it.

I do it to save power. These days I don't actually switch the router off as my mail server needs it on 24/7 but I used to switch it all off on a timer. These days I only switch off the WAP along everything else electrical outside of the kitchen.

A router can consume 15w an hour which is could be 150w 'wasted' every night. That scales up to 45 units a month or over £10 a month. Sure it's not going a huge amount but it's still a waste of money and, if you're environmentally friendly, a waste of energy.

You would need a smart plug that stores its instructions so that it knows what to do if there is no internet connection. A Tapo can not be used to power a router off and then on for this reason.

Lol - good point. No Internet would mean smart plug issues for most models. That does make things a little trickier.

Think you've got your maths wrong there, it's 4.5 units per month..

I'd be a bit horrified if my router was costing me £120 a year!

We've a remote (abroad) FTTP router that has a tendency to go off-line after a few months. Fixed by using a dumb timer which cycles the power every Thursday night. No problems since with the router.

You just need to be clear on the circumstances in which you want the router to restart.

Scenario 1: You only want the restart to happen if your internet drops...
This would be difficult, as most "Smart" devices (plugs etc) require an internet/cloud connection to send the off/on command. That's not to say its impossible, but would require more work/reading on your part to get this setup

Scenario 2: You want the device to restart on a schedule (ie once/twice a week) or upon manual trigger (eg via an app on your phone)...
Cheap (about 30quid) smart plugs from amazon would do this brilliantly. Or if you are wanting to schedule the restart, it may be possible from within your router settings.

It would be useful to know the make/model of router provided by Squirrel and this may assist others in providing further guidance.

In reply to a post by Gerard47:

My router is a Squirrel provided router connected to the fibre heroes line. Sometimes the router drops the signal and need to be rebooted Imwas told there are plugs/switches that can automatically reboot? But I am not technical

As others have said, you need to make it clear, what signal is dropping?
Looking at Squirrel, they provide a ZYXEL EX3301-T0, I can't see auto reboot on it.

you can get a smart plug that can be set to turn off the router and turn it back on at certain times, not sure if that is a good idea, but it would work.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

[I do it to save power. These days I don't actually switch the router off as my mail server needs it on 24/7 but I used to switch it all off on a timer. These days I only switch off the WAP along everything else electrical outside of the kitchen.

A router can consume 15w an hour which is could be 150w 'wasted' every night. That scales up to 45 units a month or over £10 a month. Sure it's not going a huge amount but it's still a waste of money and, if you're environmentally friendly, a waste of energy.
[/quote]

You will save pittance, I have a smart plug with an energy monitor on my router, and looking at it now it 13.2 watts, now the plug is on the end of an extension cable and on that cable as well as the router is my Echo gen4, an Ethernet switch and the hub for my smart thermostat. All those three are taking 13watts.
You would have to push a router for it to take much more energy. I downloaded a large file and the CPU on the router went from 20% to 55% and still did not do anything with the energy usage.
According to the app for my smart plug, that lot used last month 9.77kWh, which at the price of my electric at the moment is around £2.60 a month.

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

You would need a smart plug that stores its instructions so that it knows what to do if there is no internet connection. A Tapo can not be used to power a router off and then on for this reason.

No, it would need to use a timed schedule, that is stored in the plug as far as I know, so would still work without broadband. But I never tried it, maybe I should at some point.

I think everyone is making this too complicated - if you just want your router to restart every night, you don't need anything smart at all. Just use a timer plug like we used to use when going on holiday to turn lamps on and off. Doesn't even need to be digital (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Defender-Segment-Timer-Switch-Plug/dp/B01CP44AU4/)! If you set the timer to go off for one segment in the middle of the night, that's all you need

Edited by rossheth (Wed 13-Dec-23 14:33:22)

In reply to a post by BertyBB:

Think you've got your maths wrong there, it's 4.5 units per month..

I'd be a bit horrified if my router was costing me £120 a year!

OP claimed 15W = .015*24*30.4 ~= 10.9 units per month. At 28p/unit that's £36.80 per year.

4.5 units per month would be just over 6W. That's also achievable if you have a good energy efficient router.

In reply to a post by haydnwalker:

Scenario 2: You want the device to restart on a schedule (ie once/twice a week) or upon manual trigger (eg via an app on your phone)...
Cheap (about 30quid) smart plugs from amazon would do this brilliantly. Or if you are wanting to schedule the restart, it may be possible from within your router settings.

There are several smart plugs for sale on Amazon. Which one will turn a broadband router on when there is no internet connection?

There are several smart plugs for sale on Amazon. Which one will turn a broadband router on when there is no internet connection?


None of course, however there are ways round this. I have 12 old Kasa plugs and 4 new Tapo plugs (glad the new Tapo app controls the old versions as well). Basically all you do is set up a Schedule to turn ON the plug at a certain time of day (or everyday) and add more Schedules for different times e.g. every 3 hours the plug turns on. So, if you remotely turn the plug off which turns off your router, then the worse case scenario is you have to wait 3 hours for the plug to turn back on which puts your router back on. If the plug is already On and the schedule happens to turn the plug on then nothing changes.

How do you remotely turn the plug off if the Internet is down?

Post deleted by BB4Tickton

In reply to a post by ian72:

How do you remotely turn the plug off if the Internet is down?

You can setup a Schedule to turn the plug off at say 2am then on at 2.01am if required which is stored in the plug. I agree it's not the best solution, but is still an option.

It was just around your option of getting it to power up every 3 hours. But, if the Internet is down you couldn't remotely tell it to power off so that it can then power back up again. Timer schedule for regular reboots appears about the best option if it is down to the router having issues over time.