Up here in the woods 1gig Fiber Internet arrived in January 2022 replacing DSL which served the majority of the town. I had my install, I will admit for now the router is probably in the worst location possible, there is an access point on the second floor. Everything was working great after the install. Of course we can’t leave things alone, I had some devices I wanted to connect via a network cable vs wireless. The wiring in the house is cat5e which supports speeds up to 1000mbps.
After some changes, the next morning the router just froze up, I rebooted, first time not a big deal. Then it happened again in the afternoon. Maybe it’s a bad day.
Things seemed ok- then it happened again, then later that evening. Everything was plugged into a UPS.
I brought up Sense to see what was going on at the time of the issues, Each time this happened the ice maker had turned on. I did some Googling and it was clear that one of my connections to the patch panel matched a picture of “Don’t do this” - I pretty much created an EMI antenna. Combined with the fact the router is in the worse place possible (for now) I can see why it happened. So I re-did the connection and made sure the other were good. Problem went away after that.
So the ice maker turning on was generating EMI that that locked up the router ? Interesting.
That was it but I had inadvertently created the conditions for it to happen. I knew when the internet went out, and just looked at the history in Sense and it was no coincidence.
Like the ice maker inside your fridge… and electro-magnetic interference antenna? I would think it would have to think your router was sitting on top the fridge and directly overtop this… and it would be the electric valve (magnetic) ? Normally it takes something like a microwave, treadmill, or a dryer to do that.
I would I agree I was surprised by the ice maker but The router is sitting about 5 feet from the main electrical panel since that’s where the new fiber comes in. Aside from that it’s where all the cat5e for the rest of house is and the coax cable heads to the rooms, definitely the worst place for it to be It’s also the standard issue router. The initial rollout kept the type of authentication the DSL was using with plans later this year to change that. Once the dust settles from the initial rollout I’ll be getting my own equipment and moving the router. to a better place but for now all is good.
Cool issue!
Makes me think it would be fun to parse Sense and WiFi strength waveform history for troubleshooting. That’s a more common potential correlation.
Even perhaps a simple big data analysis for the Sense team: graph of Sense outages vs device discovery (one would suspect some interest around Microwaves)
So are you saying the EMI crossed paths somewhere with the copper Cat5 and a signals lock-up happened or that it was interfering with the power supply? You had an unterminated patch cable plugged in to the router and nowhere else? Yes, that’s something to be avoided.
This is really intetesting. I was hoping that the Refrigerator / ICE Maker would be acting as a Faraday Cage, limiting most of the EMI, unless there’s little metal in the ICE Maker or it’s made from plastic. Sounds like you need to start shopping for EMI Sheild 
and/or stick metal sheets around your ICE Maker, because doing it on your router will kill WI-FI Signal for sure.