Keep Your WiFi On During Load Shedding

Load shedding is not a WiFi problem, but it becomes one about four seconds after the power goes.

The lights are on the generator, the till is on a UPS, the coffee machine is warm, and the WiFi is dead. Guests notice immediately, because the thing they do when the lights go out is look at their phones.

The good news is that guest WiFi is one of the cheapest things in a venue to keep running. It uses very little power. The catch is that it depends on a chain of small devices, and if any one of them is off, the whole chain is off. Most venues back up the wrong link.

Here is the chain, in the order it fails.

What actually needs power

Four things sit between your guest and the internet. Any one of them going dark takes the WiFi with it.

1. The fibre box on the wall. This is the small unit your internet provider installed, usually in a cupboard or behind the counter. It converts the fibre coming into the building into something your network can use. It has its own plug, and it is almost always the first thing forgotten.

2. The router. The box that shares the connection out to the building. Sometimes this is the same unit your provider gave you, sometimes it is separate.

3. The switch, if you have one. A box that network cables plug into, usually in the same cupboard. Small venues may not have one at all.

4. The access points. The flat white units on the ceiling or the wall that actually broadcast the WiFi. In a one-room café there may be none, because the router is doing that job itself. In a lodge with several buildings there may be a dozen.

Back up the first two and the WiFi works in the area around the cupboard. Back up all four and it works everywhere it normally works.

Start with a mini-UPS

The device to look at first is a small UPS built for exactly this: a compact battery box that sits next to the fibre unit and the router, plugs into the wall, and takes over the instant the power drops.

They are not the large tower UPS units sold for computers. They are made for low-power network equipment, they run silently, and they are inexpensive compared with almost anything else in the building.

Two things to check before buying one:

• The plugs and voltages must match what you are powering. Network equipment often runs on 12V or 5V rather than mains, and a mini-UPS usually offers a small set of specific outputs. Take a photo of the power bricks on your existing equipment and check the numbers printed on them against the unit you are considering.
• The runtime is a function of what you plug in. The rating on the box assumes a certain load. Adding a fifth device to a unit sized for two shortens the runtime for all of them. Work out what you actually need on and leave the rest off.

If you already run a proper inverter or battery system for the lights and the till, the network cupboard can usually just be a small extra load on that instead. It draws very little.

Then work out how the access points get their power

This is the step most venues miss, and it is the reason WiFi often works at the counter and nowhere else during an outage.

Access points on ceilings usually have no plug near them. They take power down the same network cable that carries their data, an arrangement generally called PoE, or power over Ethernet. The power comes either from a small adapter near the cupboard, or from a switch that supplies power to everything plugged into it.

Either way, the power for every access point in the building traces back to that one cupboard. Which is good news: back up the switch or the adapters, and every access point stays alive without running a single extra cable.

If your access points do have their own plugs on the ceiling, that is a harder problem, and worth raising with whoever installed them.

Consider a second way out of the building

Backup power keeps your equipment running. It does not keep your internet connection up.

Fibre runs through equipment in the street and at your provider’s exchange, and that equipment has its own power situation, which is nothing to do with yours. Sometimes the fibre stays up right through an outage. Sometimes it does not, and no amount of battery in your cupboard changes that.

The answer, where the connection genuinely matters, is a second connection on a different kind of network, usually a mobile one. A router that can hold both will move traffic across to the mobile connection when the fibre stops answering, and move it back when the fibre returns. Guests generally do not notice.

Two honest cautions:

• Mobile networks are also affected by outages. Towers have batteries, and those batteries have limits. A second connection improves your odds; it does not guarantee anything.
• Mobile data costs money in a way fibre does not. If everything in the building fails over to it, including whatever your staff are streaming, the bill will say so. It is worth setting the mobile connection up as the fallback for the things that matter rather than a straight replacement for the whole line.

A short checklist

Walk to the network cupboard with this list.

1. Find the fibre unit. Is it plugged into backup power, or the wall?
2. Find the router. Same question.
3. Find the switch, if there is one. Same question.
4. Ask how the ceiling access points are powered. Down the network cable from the cupboard, or from a plug at each unit?
5. Add up how many devices you are asking a backup unit to carry, and check that against what the unit is rated for.
6. Decide whether the connection itself matters enough to justify a second one on a mobile network.
7. Test it. Switch the power off at the board on a quiet morning and see what still works. That is the only answer you can trust.

Point six and point seven are the two most people skip, and point seven is the one that finds the surprise.

What this changes for a venue

None of this is dramatic engineering. It is a few small boxes in a cupboard and one afternoon of somebody paying attention.

What it buys you is that during the next outage, your guests stay online, your card machine keeps talking to the bank, and nobody has to apologise at the door. In a coffee shop or a guest house, staying open when the street is dark is a genuine reason people choose you.

We are not a load-shedding company and we do not sell batteries. But we install and run guest WiFi in venues that lose power regularly, so the question comes up on nearly every site visit. If you want a hand working out which pieces of your setup need backing up, that is part of the conversation when we look at a venue.

Talk to us about your venue, or start with our simple venue WiFi audit to work out what you have before you spend anything.