What happens when your internet goes down?

The article will provide insight on what happens to Rhombus devices when the internet goes down, provide some troubleshooting for your network, and also provide some helpful links to other KBA to help get Rhombus devices connected to the network. 

• Rhombus devices activity during network disconnection
• Network troubleshooting
• The network is up, but Rhombus devices are not
• Helpful Links

Rhombus device's activity during network disconnection 

During a network disconnection and while the cameras still have power, our Rhombus cameras will still record footage and save the footage to the cameras on board storage. Once the camera's connection has been restored all the alerts and movements will be added to the camera's timeline. 

Networking Troubleshooting 

When a network goes down it can be for multiple reasons. Here are some common steps to troubleshoot a network and hopefully identify the issue. 

• Check the Hardware - We recommend checking all the wires to see if they are plugged in across the network. Make sure all the switches are connected to the correct ports. Next, we recommend the simple but effective technique of power cycling the modem, router, switch, and other devices through the network. This may be a simple task, but it is the most common solution to problems. 
• Check network address - Using either a terminal (macOS) or Command prompt (Windows) you can check your network address. Using the command ipconfig in Windows or ipconfig getifaddr en0 in masOS will pull up the current IP address for your computer. If your computer’s IP address starts with 169, the computer is not receiving a valid IP address. If it starts with anything other than 169, your computer is being allocated a valid IP address from your router. If your IP address does start with a 169 we recommend reaching out to your ISP(Internet Service Provider). 
• Ping a website - If you are getting a network IP with an address other than 169 and your router is working fine. The problem could be between the router and the internet. The next step would be to run a ping test to a Google DNS Server (8.8.8.8) in the terminal (macOS) or Command prompt (Windows) type ping 8.8.8.8 this will provide you with either the time it takes to reach the server or more troubleshooting on the issue. 
• Perform a DNS check - Use the command nslookup to determine whether there’s a problem with the server you’re trying to connect to. If you perform a DNS check on, for example, google.com and receive results such as “Timed Out,” “Server Failure,” “Refused,” “No Response from Server,” or “Network Is Unreachable,” it may indicate the problem originates in the DNS server for your destination. (You can also use nslookup to check your own DNS server.)
• Contact the ISP - If issues are still happening with your network we recommend reaching out to your Internet Service Provider. There could be a possible outage in the area, also your ISP should be able to troubleshoot your network for you. 
• Check on virus and malware protection - Next, make sure your virus and malware tools are running correctly, and they haven’t flagged anything that could be affecting part of your network and stopping it from functioning.

The network is up, but Rhombus devices are not

If your network is running with no issues and your Rhombus device is giving you a 'Disconnected' reading we recommend performing the steps below. 

• Check the Hardware - We recommend checking all the wires to see if they are plugged in across the network. Make sure all the switches are connected to the correct ports. Next, we recommend the simple but effective technique of power cycling the Rhombus device. This may be a simple task, but it is the most common solution to problems. 
• Check the port configurations - If the camera is still showing a disconnection error. We recommend checking the port configurations on your firewalls and also making sure you have the proper URLs whitelisted. Here is a link to a KBA with more information on this. 
• Reach out to Rhombus Support - If the camera is still having issues connecting to the network or is now showing a 'Contact Support' option. We recommend reaching out to our support team at support@rhombussystems.com, help@rhombussystems.com, or click here.

Helpful Links

• Rhombus Outage Status Page
• Rhombus devices port configuration
• Networking Best practices
• Supported Wifi Networks

If you have any further questions please reach out to our Rhombus Support at help@rhombus.com. If you would like to talk to a Rhombus Sales Representative please reach out to sales@rhombus.com.