Repair-It

Wow. What is with these terrible power factors?

Bottom line:
- The grid charges you for 5W (isn't that nice of them*) even though they are supplying 25VA (which is called apparent power)
- Your generator, a UPS, a solar panel or anything else does not give you that freebie. So you need to supply 25VA.

So, 25VA is 50% load for this UPS. That is 64 minutes. If you are still looking for 8+ hours, this is certainly not going to cut it.

* Big commercial and industrial customers DO have a power factor requirement. Residential customers do not.

All installed, and charging.

Bryan helpfully pointed out that I no longer need that gigabit network switch. Because the router does gigabit and has enough ports. Whoops - I spaced on that. So that will save on a small amount of latency, complexity and a little bit of battery backup energy, too.

Removed the 8 port switch. Everything is just connected to the router. Still have switches in the bedroom and great room, but that is one less switch in the chain.

Bing speed test results.

Ping
<1 ms
Download
55.44 Mbps
Upload
59.47 Mbps

Testmy.net
Download :: 53.8 Mbps 6.7 MB/s Upload :: 28.1 Mbps 3.5 MB/s

Speedtest


Pretty happy with this for $40/mo.

I am a little confused with the setup. Is the main Verizon box plugged in to this?

What are the other switches for?


If Verizon and the other switches are not plugged in to this, what do you have still working when the power goes out?

bill25 wrote:I am a little confused with the setup. Is the main Verizon box plugged in to this?

Yes. When I had my FIOS installed, he kept the box itself but the previous owner had phone service so he removed the battery and I asked him to mount the power supply next to all my network stuff in the basement (instead of in the garage where it had been), since I was planning ahead for having a UPS on that stuff. So it is right there and I just plugged it right into the UPS. I believe it sends power to the box over coax - at least that's what it looks like.

What are the other switches for?

Switch in the bedroom covers the desktop/monitor, work laptop and whatever else I might want to plug in so I only had to run one Cat 5E to the basement.
Switch in the great room covers the TV, HTPC, Xbox 360 and whatever else I might want to plug in. Same deal - one cable run back to basement.

If Verizon and the other switches are not plugged in to this, what do you have still working when the power goes out?

The FIOS box is as I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

The other two are connected to existing UPSs I already have in those locations. Upstairs it powers the desktop, monitor, switch and a night stand lamp which has been really handy (got the idea from Poltrino). In the great room it powers the HTPC, TV and switch mainly. All I really use those for is to cover short outages and to allow time to gracefully shut down (hibernate actually) in the event of a real outage. On the generator, they provide a nice little buffer when refueling.

They are BackUPS RS 1300 that I bought years ago. Still working on the original battery though my time must be running out on that. Good units though. They plug into a computer via USB and Windows treats them like you have a laptop battery. I remember back in the day having to install clunky APC management tools.

Well it was working but the battery died. Amazon reviews seem to back my experience. First it the lights go off requiring a removal and reinstall of the battery. Then it fails entirely. Mine is failed. Very annoying on generator power because every flicker on a major load change and the FiOS and router reset losing both wifi and wired internet.

After some support call drama ("you are out of warranty by manufacture date" and then "ok we'll use your Amazon receipt" ?????) I should be getting my warranty battery in 2 weeks or so.

Got my warranty battery which is cool. Plugged in, charging, looks like I am in business again. If it lasts another 2.5 years then I guess that would be 5 years on a $50 UPS. Not terrible I suppose.