X10: Keeping Web Sites Up & Running

June 15, 2001 - Dan Denault runs his own e-business consulting firm, which is still in its early phase. Naturally he’s got to keep things going while he builds up a clientele, and develops customer trust. Dan states "I have a DSL line at home from which I host our company’s website and email service, and many other Internet services that we offer our clients and employees." But as any Internet savvy user will tell you, those connections are very frequently interrupted and disconnected. This is not good for a small business. But Dan is what they call the "pro-active" type, and he’s figured out a way to keep disruptions to a minimum. Here's what Dan had to say.

"I have had the ActiveHome kit for quite some time that included the CM11A [ActiveHome computer interface]. I currently also have a running RedHat Linux WebServer hosting our website running the program ’heyu.’ A NetGear RT314 Gateway Router with PPOE (which stores the DSL account information) built right into it was also implemented as a firewall, which was plugged into a X10 Appliance Module. I wrote a program in Perl on the RedHat Linux WebServer that pinged given hosts on the Internet every minute. If there was no reply, naturally it would mean that my DSL connection was dropped. So I then invoked ’heyu’ to shut off the NetGear RT314 Gateway Router and turn it back on. After that it would then send an email to allow for monitoring of downtimes. This then re-established my Internet connection allowing for almost no down time of our website, email and other Internet services that we provide. "

*Note: The TZO dynamic name resolution service was also used because Dynamic Addressing was used by the ISP (Different IP Addresses are given to the DSL client).

So basically what’s happening here is that when Dan’s computer loses its connection, he remotely turns the router off and back on. Flipping the power on and off like this allows the Router to re-establish its connection. The end result is less downtime.

This same thing can be done if your PC freezes up. You can set an appliance module on the PC, and give the command to turn off the power, and then back on - thus rebooting the PC. It’s not at all complicated, and many people do this with their web servers. It saves the time of having to drive down to the facility and manually reboot the router or computer.

Dan summarizes the value in using X10 to, "achieve hosting my email, web, and Internet services from my home DSL connection, without having to pay thousands of hosting services that would give the same level of service with the inconvenience of being in a remote location."

So there’s proactive, and there’s Proactive. Dan is definitely a Proactive kind of guy, who can make just about anything work for him. It’s like the saying by Elinor Smith, "It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things." Dan is one who definitely knows how to happen to things. And X10 was there for him, and we’re glad of that too.

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