Before my next international trip, I’ll have work done in my attics (2 water heaters to be replaced by the tankless kind…). It’s possible that the plumbers could do something to inadvertently mess up the original house builders’ network cabling. The cables are not all in protected conduits like you’d think.

Problem:

I need to know immediately if something takes down my home's internet access. I need a convenient *instant* internet connectivity (WAN) down status alert. Convenient simply means I don’t need to be in the electronics closet looking at the LED on my router to see if it flips from green to red.


Indicators that you might think would be an immediate internet status indicator were *not* at all immediate or valid. Examples:

- Not Pandora
I started playing Pandora off one of the TVs thinking that when internet went down, the music would stop.
No. It kept going for a while. It must buffer or something. Then it stopped.


- Not the iPhone’s WiFi connected symbol, upper left on the screen
No. That symbol just means I can connect to my wireless router inside the house. It does not mean my wireless router can also get to the world.


- Not Alexa
No. I thought Alexa would announce there’s a problem. I know I’ve heard that before. But she didn’t. So I’d need to keep asking for the weather to know if she can’t get to the internet.

So I google'd for a WiFi connected clock that gets its time off a SNTP server, thinking that it would show an indicator of some kind as soon as the WiFi signal was lost.
Wow, those are expensive for what they do! $200 and above for the 2-3 models on Amazon.

I guess the ideal solution would be:

I receive a text message whenever when my home internet connectivity goes down.

Am I missing anything obvious? What would you use?

This would also be wonderful for critical work scenarios. Like when I'm leading a morning e-meeting with 200 people. If I see a text message that my internet access is down when I wake up, I might still have time to drive to somewhere with WiFi to deliver the call and share off my laptop screen.

PS:

I learned the above yesterday because a Spectrum (former Time Warner) technician was at my house for 2 hours. I’m paying $74/month in Austin, Texas, for 100Mbps down, 10 up. But I was only getting 20 down, 10 up.

Fixed! Now I’m seeing > 118Mbps down. 10up.

I followed the tech everywhere to understand what he did. I also learned the value in insisting on
1) a Spectrum employee, not a contractor
2) a “signature service technician”,
when I made the appt.

Both good pieces of advice from the last tech who came out several years back.