Data gaps during internet outage

[lensovet]

Xfinity came out to our neighbors and broke our internet for a day.

During this time, wifi was up and functioning but there was no internet connectivity.

I’m seeing zero data in the app for solar production, grid/house usage, or PW for the duration of the outage. Two questions:

- since PW has cellular backup, why didn’t it use it?
- is this data lost forever?

 

[jhn_]

I have noticed my gateway catch up over time after an internet outage.

 

[jjrandorin]

Xfinity came out to our neighbors and broke our internet for a day.

During this time, wifi was up and functioning but there was no internet connectivity.

I’m seeing zero data in the app for solar production, grid/house usage, or PW for the duration of the outage. Two questions:

- since PW has cellular backup, why didn’t it use it?
- is this data lost forever?

The gateway (nor any other device that has both wifi and cellular) wont automatically switch from wifi to cellular if its connected to a wifi connection, whether or not that connection actually goes out to the internet. You can test this yourself with your cellphone or home computers if you want, if your home internet modem and router are two different devices.

In any case, thats the answer to "why didnt it use cellular" (because it was connected to wifi, regardless of the fact that your wifi did not have an internet connection at the time).

I dont know on point number 2 but I doubt the overall production data is lost. Perhaps it gets allocated back to the day it happened, or perhaps it gets lumped in with the next day. You can keep an eye on it and let us know what happens.

 

[yblaser]

The gateway (nor any other device that has both wifi and cellular) wont automatically switch from wifi to cellular if its connected to a wifi connection, whether or not that connection actually goes out to the internet. You can test this yourself with your cellphone or home computers if you want, if your home internet modem and router are two different devices.

In any case, thats the answer to "why didnt it use cellular" (because it was connected to wifi, regardless of the fact that your wifi did not have an internet connection at the time).

I dont know on point number 2 but I doubt the overall production data is lost. Perhaps it gets allocated back to the day it happened, or perhaps it gets lumped in with the next day. You can keep an eye on it and let us know what happens.

I don't know about the gateway, but my cell phone (Android) certainly falls back to the cellular network when there is no internet connection through the wifi network it is connected to. It actually takes a custom setting to force it to stay connected to a wifi network with no internet connection like when using it to connect to the gateway's standalone wifi network.

 

[jjrandorin]

I don't know about the gateway, but my cell phone (Android) certainly falls back to the cellular network when there is no internet connection through the wifi network it is connected to. It actually takes a custom setting to force it to stay connected to a wifi network with no internet connection like when using it to connect to the gateway's standalone wifi network.

My iPhone doesnt, and I have tested it. If there is wifi connection but no internet it will simply stay connected to internet. I have not tried it with my pixel 6 phone cause I dont use it very often but I will have to see if it does that.

 

[zƬesla]

Keep in mind too that some gateways have the older no longer supported 3G cellular modem. Mine never worked anyway because of it being in the basement with poor reception given limited coverage around here.

 

[lensovet]

My iPhone doesnt, and I have tested it. If there is wifi connection but no internet it will simply stay connected to internet. I have not tried it with my pixel 6 phone cause I dont use it very often but I will have to see if it does that.

My iPhone absolutely does, though there’s a setting to turn it off. In fact my iPhone throwing up a notification about lack of connectivity was how I found out.

And the Tesla app showed the outage too, so it knew that the gateway wasn’t reachable. There’s no way the gateway shuts down its cellular modem, so Tesla backend could literally send it a command (though gateway could be smart enough to detect it on its own) to switch network interfaces.

Side note: gateway is connected via Ethernet. Point remains.

 

[lensovet]

Keep in mind too that some gateways have the older no longer supported 3G cellular modem. Mine never worked anyway because of it being in the basement with poor reception given limited coverage around here.

this gateway was installed less than a year ago, so that’s definitely not the issue.

 

[lensovet]

You can keep an eye on it and let us know what happens.

Data for day 1 of the outage has come back for all 4 categories, though I had to pull down to refresh for the day view to show it correctly (the tip-off for me was that monthly view showed a full day of solar production for that day). Data for the morning of day 2 (service restored around 10 am) is still currently missing.