Sudden burst of weather in Wellington (20/09)

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JamesL

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#129590 20-Sep-2013 18:30

Anyone else lose any electronics with that thunder and lightening?

I just lost a PoE TP Link switch which was connected to a circuit breaker power strip which was connected to another power breaker power strip. Neither of which went off...

On a brighter note the VDSL2 modem went from 32mbit -> 45mbit when it resynced. Presumably most of the people on the street temporarily lost power for a split second

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#899161 20-Sep-2013 18:53

It's quite spectacular, clusters of flashes and a good number of small flashes between the big ones. Not lost any electronics but have lost satellite signal for the first time since adjusting the LNB almost a year ago.

Correct that - it's back. How long for though...??

freitasm

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#899167 20-Sep-2013 19:15

I shutdown my NAS (even though it's plugged to a UPS) and my TV/HTPC combo. Everything else is still plugged in, and all working here.

I can imagine some other areas might have no power no - a few flicks and the UPS once flicked quickly but not power loss here.

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#899170 20-Sep-2013 19:28

An impressive electrical storm. No power issues here and all devices intact, decided against going into the pool though

alasta

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#899173 20-Sep-2013 19:33

Dratsab: It's quite spectacular, clusters of flashes and a good number of small flashes between the big ones. Not lost any electronics but have lost satellite signal for the first time since adjusting the LNB almost a year ago.

Correct that - it's back. How long for though...??

I was thinking that my satellite reception would probably struggle, but it's been fine for the hour and a half that I was using it tonight.

ghettomaster

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#899174 20-Sep-2013 19:37

No loss of any gear but a pretty impressive strike took out my cable modem and Telstra tv box so something down the line has died. I'm in central Lower Hutt (by the hospital). Anyone else noticed such an outage?

jimbob79

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#899175 20-Sep-2013 19:37

Vodafone's InHome cable broadband went down, despite being assured originally by TelstraClear that all the Local cabinets has there own independent UPS. What's the point of me having my own UPS?

This is the negative side of having a Naked Broadband & VoIP.

sbiddle

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#899184 20-Sep-2013 19:44

jimbob79: Vodafone's InHome cable broadband went down, despite being assured originally by TelstraClear that all the Local cabinets has there own independent UPS. What's the point of me having my own UPS?

This is the negative side of having a Naked Broadband & VoIP.

The cabinets do have batteries for POTS phone services. It's impossible to maintain the cable component as there is no way to power all the amplifiers around the network. These can't be powered by a cabinet. Whwether you will lose service depends entirely on your location in the node and the architecture of your local node.

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wongtop

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#899187 20-Sep-2013 19:49

Lost dsl here in Maupuia at six pm. Havent tried my spare modem yet.

Hammerer

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#899188 20-Sep-2013 19:50

The lightening took an hour to pass which is unusual. In half an hour, the thunder only moved a couple of kilometers away.

We turned everything off as we've had damage before. The boys were bereft - no League of Legends and cable TV - and had to sit with us and talk like families used to.

[Edit added the following]
In recent years a transformer was hit near the hospital, 8 minutes walk away across the railway lines. That was when we got damage. This time there were no brownouts or anything.

MaxLV

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#899192 20-Sep-2013 20:06

JamesL: Anyone else lose any electronics with that thunder and lightening? I just lost a PoE TP Link switch which was connected to a circuit breaker power strip which was connected to another power breaker power strip. Neither of which went off...

On a brighter note the VDSL2 modem went from 32mbit -> 45mbit when it resynced. Presumably most of the people on the street temporarily lost power for a split second

No, turned everything off, and unplugged them when it started, but going by the time span between the lightning flashes and the sound the thunder (10 - 20 seconds) it wasn't all that close to central wellington. (not sure how reliable that is as a 'risk' test though. Didn't notice any power surges/fluctuations either.

kendog

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#899220 20-Sep-2013 20:45

Saw the closest bolt of lightning I have ever seen, just out of Whitby.
Felt and heard the sound before the light had gone, very impressive.

jimbob79

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#899222 20-Sep-2013 20:46

sbiddle:
jimbob79: Vodafone's InHome cable broadband went down, despite being assured originally by TelstraClear that all the Local cabinets has there own independent UPS. What's the point of me having my own UPS?

This is the negative side of having a Naked Broadband & VoIP.

The cabinets do have batteries for POTS phone services. It's impossible to maintain the cable component as there is no way to power all the amplifiers around the network. These can't be powered by a cabinet. Whwether you will lose service depends entirely on your location in the node and the architecture of your local node.

How much power is required for the "amplifiers"?
In my old office we had secondary backup power supply which was used power Wellington's Citylink's DSLAM local cabinet in the event that there own UPS failed. Admittedly that was a very expensive option for us at the time and it only failed-over once in the years we had it. Also the infrastructure is completely different for Vodafone's Residential Cable but my point is that we had simple 1000/1400VA UPS and that could power a single cabinet used for a few blocks of Featherston Street. CityLink was also more than happy for us to power there own equipment in the event of a power failure.

JamesL

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#899241 20-Sep-2013 21:26

Might unplug things the next time it happens, although there's a router plugged into the same power board as the PoE switch that fried so no idea why that was the only thing to die

Pretty crazy stuff, didn't expect that storm at all

sbiddle

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#899249 20-Sep-2013 21:40

jimbob79:
sbiddle:
jimbob79: Vodafone's InHome cable broadband went down, despite being assured originally by TelstraClear that all the Local cabinets has there own independent UPS. What's the point of me having my own UPS?

This is the negative side of having a Naked Broadband & VoIP.

The cabinets do have batteries for POTS phone services. It's impossible to maintain the cable component as there is no way to power all the amplifiers around the network. These can't be powered by a cabinet. Whwether you will lose service depends entirely on your location in the node and the architecture of your local node.

How much power is required for the "amplifiers"?
In my old office we had secondary backup power supply which was used power Wellington's Citylink's DSLAM local cabinet in the event that there own UPS failed. Admittedly that was a very expensive option for us at the time and it only failed-over once in the years we had it. Also the infrastructure is completely different for Vodafone's Residential Cable but my point is that we had simple 1000/1400VA UPS and that could power a single cabinet used for a few blocks of Featherston Street. CityLink was also more than happy for us to power there own equipment in the event of a power failure.

CityLink isn't really a good example to use. They lose a lot of their network during a power cut as most of their switches in buildings aren't on a UPS. They also don't have a DSLAM - they're all fibre direct to customers or fibre to a building switch with Ethernet to the customer.

Backup for the amplifiers simply isn't possible from an engineering perspective without overlaying the HFC network with 230V which simply can't happen for a number of reasons.

Outages with HFC is one downside of leveraging technology that was originally designed for delivering TV signals.. For upstream to work you need amplifiers, and they need to be powered.

naggyman

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#899260 20-Sep-2013 21:58

I think I may win here. I am in the Wairarapa and at the time I was behind a spotlight pointing at Steve Wrigley. The spotlight and our stage lights all dimmed down, which stopped Steve. Then we heard some perfectly timed thunder which Steve handled perfectly. I panicked a little that we would have a comedy night without any power!

Good times for all!

Morgan French-Stagg

morgan.french.net.nz

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