How to get free SMS Outage Alerts

This page describes (in scant detail) how to set up free SMS outage alerts, in particular how to get an text message alerting that an internet uplink has gone offline, i.e. because the DSL modem locked up. Please note you will likely incur some sort of SMS charges from your cell phone provider if you don't have unlimited text.

For this to work, you will need the following:

    • Wired uplink router capable of respond to HTTP or HTTPS requests from the outside world, suggested with password protection on this. Most Linksys DSL/broadband routers are capable of doing this via their web configuration interface. We've tested this so far with using an old PC running Zeroshell.
    • A resolvable IP address or domain name for the wired router. A fixed IP is ideal, but if your broadband provider only gives you dynamic IPs (i.e. via DHCP), you can look to see whether your router can maintain a dynamic domain name using a service such as dyndns.org. Most Linksys routers are capable of this.
    • A server somewhere on the internet running the monit monitoring service, which is capable connecting to your broadband router (when it's online).
    • A Gmail account.
    • A cell phone.

Steps:

    • Set up monit on the server to send alerts to your Gmail address.
    • Set up monit on the server to periodically connect to the DSL router's web interface, e.g.
    • check host DSLROUTER with address yourdslrouter.dyndns.org
    • if failed url https://username:password@yourdslrouter.dyndns.org:XXXX 7 times within 10 cycles then alert
    • This will tell monit to connect to the web configuration UI of your router, using username "username", password "password", domain name "yourdslrouter.dyndns.org", and port # XXXX. All these will depend on how your DSL router is configured and the IP address give to it by your broadband provider.
    • Depending on the monitoring interval you define for monit (typically every 2 minutes), this will trigger an email alert if monit is unable to connect to your router at least 7 time within a time frame of 10 intervals (i.e. 20minutes).
    • In Gmail, create a filter so that monit alerts like the one above are forwarded to the SMS email address for your cell phone. E.g. if you use Sprint, the email address for your phone would be 15551234567@messaging.sprintpcs.com, assuming your phone # is 1-555-123-4567. You can look up the email address for your cell provide via Google on on pages like this.