Semi-regular, Periodic Firewall/Router outage

One of our buildings has experienced periodic internet outages regularly, at all times of the day, and on all days of the week. The outages last between 2 and 5 minutes, usually. It is not likely to be the ISP, as the WiFi SSID's disappear during this time. Looking at the usage statistics in TM shows a blank spot in the latency chart that corresponds to the reported outage. See the attached chart.

It happens often enough that at least one of the wards is resorting to using someone's data plan to broadcast their sacrament meetings.

When the bishops report the problem to Facilities, they are told to report the problem to the Stake Tech Specialist. Ok, great. That's me. But what on earth am I supposed to do about it? Is there anything we are able to do, other than reboot the firewall, and feel sorry for them?

KentAnderson wrote:When the bishops report the problem to Facilities, they are told to report the problem to the Stake Tech Specialist. Ok, great. That's me. But what on earth am I supposed to do about it? Is there anything we are able to do, other than reboot the firewall, and feel sorry for them?

It is standard practice for the FM Group to ask the STS to troubleshoot Internet/Firewall/Network problems. Now that you have done that, you should report back to the FM Group that you are not able to resolve the issue and ask them to either have a technical specialist look at the situation or send you a new firewall.

Do not rule out the ISP. The FM Group should ask the ISP to look at the problem and report back to them. If you are able to determine that the problem is not being caused by the ISP, you probably need a new firewall. But it is possible that a glitch at the ISP is causing the firewall to reboot, and when that happens, WiFi goes away during the process.

Another thing to consider early on is that the firewall may malfunction if it is in a high temperature area with lack of cooling.

The FM Group is always happy when I report back as the STS that I have resolved a problem. But in my case, they are quick to escalate when the situation is beyond my ability or knowledge to fix.

The gap in the log suggests the problem is somewhere between the ISP and the firewall. But I'm not sure as the SSID would be lost if the firewall goes out. That might be worth a test.

I would check on the ventilation of the devices. The install instructions said not to stack the firewall and switches, but that may have been ignored. I have noticed both get quite warm.

I'd also contact the GSD. They should be able to look into the logs of the devices to see when they were last rebooted. If both the firewall and switch rebooted at the same time, you'd be looking at bad power. Rebooting the switch will take out the SSID as the APs should be powered by the switch. But I don't think the switch alone would take out the latency log.

Likewise a call to the ISP to see when the modem last booted might be a good idea.

Bottom line, look for clues as to what's going on.