Network Status

It is common for home automation users to want to check, and perhaps respond to, changes in the availability of Internet access. In fact, on Vera systems in particular, reliable Internet access is quite important, as these systems rely on network-based clocks to keep time, and make frequent connections to the Vera cloud infrastructure for various management and backup functions.

As of version 3.6, Reactor includes an integrated Internet health check. The check uses a list of well-known, reliable systems (such as Google DNS) to check access every five minutes. If a check fails, two additional checks are made at one minute intervals, and if all three checks fail, Internet access is determined to be "down" (unavailable). This is reflected in the value of the NetworkStatus state variable on the Reactor master device, which you can test using a Device State condition in your ReactorSensors. A value of 0 indicates that Internet access is not available; any other value indicates that Internet access is at least partially functional (currently, only values 0 and 1 are used).

Modifying the Test

The check interval can be modified by setting an interval in minutes in the Reactor master device state variable InternetCheckInterval. If set to 0, the Internet health check is suppressed. The default value is 5 (minutes).

The list of sites checked can also be modified. The default list has been carefully selected for reliability, but it's possible that some locations in the world may have trouble reaching certain sites for social, political, or other reasons. The list of sites checked can be modified by providing a comma-separated list of at least three sites (IP addresses or host names with domain) in the InternetCheckSites state variable on the Reactor master device. It is important that all sites chosen be (a) outside your LAN, and (b) regarded as "always up" in principal (failures of the site should be so rare that, for example, they may garner national media attention when they occur). It is recommended that at least one of the listed sites be an IP address, and the more the better. You may, in all, specify any number of test sites. The sites will be contacted in round-robin fashion, so the first site listed will not be "spammed" with tests because it happens to be first in line. The default list is: 8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4,1.1.1.1,www.facebook.com,www.amazon.com,www.google.com.

If the InternetCheckInterval and/or InternetCheckSites state variables do not exist in your Reactor master device's Advanced > Variables tab, you can create them. On the Reactor master device, go to the Advanced > New Service tab and create either or both. The service ID (for the New service field) is urn:toggledbits-com:serviceId:Reactor. Make sure you enter the service ID and variable name exactly as shown in this paragraph.

Help me out!

If you live in a region where the default test sites don't work reliably and have configured a useful set of alternatives, please let me know via the Vera Community Forums or by opening a Github issue. I may add that information to the code or here in the documentation to assist other users in your locale. Thank you!