DSL and cable internet reliability have improved to the point where the service is, for most, essentially equivalent to a phone dial tone. There are still temporary outages, and some installations do have quality-of-service issues, but for the most part, the Internet as delivered by DSL and Cable has more than enough cabability to deliver irrigation commands on a highly reliable basis.
LawnCheck was designed to be able to provide reliable remote irrigation service even with a low quality Internet connection. LawnCheck generally provides a 1 hour irrigation command delivery window and this provides reliable irrigation for standard quality always-on internet connections.
For Internet connections that are subject to higher levels of extended outages, LawnCheck offers extended delivery options. These options provide up to a 5 hour irrigation command delivery window, centered around the cycle start time.
LawnCheck provides a continuous connection log allowing you to monitor connection outages so you can determine if your Internet connection provides the reliability needed for irrigation.
Also, it is important to note that with LawnCheck a complete irrigation cycle is delivered in one command. Irrigation is never turned on without turn off information, so there is no adverse effect if your network connection drops after a command is received.
If you feel that your Internet service is not yet reliable enough to carry irrigation commands but still like the accessibility and smart control provided by LawnCheck, it is very easy to install a backup scheduler on a local PC. A local scheduler called OptiRain (is free) that runs on Windows PC's is available and can be configured to run as a secondary scheduler.
