Dental Office Network in Austin: Keeping Internet, Phones and the Schedule Running Through Ice and Wind
Seven-forty on a February Wednesday, ice on every branch. The office lights are on, yet the phones say "no service" and the cloud schedule won't load. Or the reverse: the suite is dark and only your cell phone works.
This page is for the office manager of an open practice in the Austin metro, and the owner who signs off on her plan, written after a season of outage scares and before the next one. It sits under our Austin dental IT guide and works next to Legend's page on network design for dental offices. It is about the office you already run. If you are building a new suite, the new-office network setup guide covers first installs and cabling instead.
In this guide
- What actually fails in an Austin dental office when the weather turns?
- What did Uri, Mara and the 2025 microburst do to the grid, and what does each mean for your network?
- Should an Austin practice have a second internet connection?
- How do the phones keep ringing when the office can't open?
- What should run on battery, and for how long?
- Can the schedule and charts be reached from home during a closure?
- What should the office manager do in storm week?
- How do you check an existing Austin office network before the next storm season?
- Where has Legend done network work for Austin-area practices?
- What to ask your IT provider about your network and outage plan
- Frequently asked questions
- The bottom line
What actually fails in an Austin dental office when the weather turns?
Three different things fail, and each needs its own answer. The office can lose power while the internet outside still works. It can keep power while the internet or phone line is cut somewhere down the street. Or power and internet both survive, yet the phones stop because they run over a connection that is struggling.
Most office plans quietly assume the first case only: the power goes out, everyone goes home, the power comes back, everyone comes back. The other two are the ones that cause the confused mornings, because the building looks normal.
No power at the office. Everything in the closet stops unless it is on a battery: the firewall, the switch that feeds every operatory, the Wi-Fi access points, the phone system if it lives on site, and the server that holds the practice-management database and, in many offices, the imaging database. Sensors and the pan cannot capture because the workstations they plug into are off. A server that loses power mid-write can come back with a damaged database, which is the expensive part of an outage that nobody sees at the time.
Power, but no internet. Inside the office, a server-based practice-management system and local imaging keep working, because they talk to each other over the office's own switch. What stops is everything that leaves the building: cloud-hosted practice software, insurance eligibility checks, e-claims, patient texting and reminder services, email, card terminals that process over the internet, and any phone system that runs over the internet. Remote access into the office also stops, so nobody can work from home either.
Internet, but no phones. If the phones are internet-based and the connection is thin or unstable, calls can drop or fail to ring through while web pages still load slowly. If the phones are on an older on-site system with its own lines, the opposite can happen: the internet is fine and the phone lines are the casualty.
Austin has had all three in recent memory. Austin Energy's own report on the May 2025 storm says the utility "has experienced its three most impactful storms in the last five years": Winter Storm Uri (2021), Winter Storm Mara (2023) and the May Microburst (2025). Each of those storms failed in a different way, which is why one plan does not cover all three.
What did Uri, Mara and the 2025 microburst do to the grid, and what does each mean for your network?
Uri cut power in rotation across days, Mara's ice broke lines and kept some customers dark for more than a week, and the 2025 microburst brought down poles, including some carrying communications lines. Rotation calls for clean shutdowns, multi-day damage calls for working from elsewhere, and pole damage calls for a second internet path.
The table below takes its figures from Austin Energy's after-action reports, quoting the utility where the wording matters, and translates each event into what it does to a dental office. Austin Energy's figures describe Austin Energy customers only. Offices in the surrounding counties may be served by another utility or a cooperative, so check which utility serves your street address before you borrow these numbers for your own plan.
Austin outage types and what they mean for a dental office network
| Event | What Austin Energy reported | What failed | What it does to an office network, internet and phones | What keeps the schedule running |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter Storm Uri, February 2021 | "Approximately 220,000 Austin Energy customers were without power at different points", some for several days; the ERCOT-ordered load shed "ultimately lasted four days" | Supply: ERCOT ordered utilities to cut power to customers in rotation (load shed) | Power drops and returns, sometimes repeatedly. Equipment without a battery switches off hard each time. Your internet carrier's cabinet down the block can sit on another rotation than your suite, so the connection may drop while your lights are on | A battery that carries the network core through short gaps and gives the server time to shut down cleanly; a printed schedule; phones forwarded before the first cut |
| Winter Storm Mara, February 2023 | Ice "more than seven-tenths of an inch" in the western part of the service area; at the peak, 173,879 customer outages, 32% of customers; on February 5 the utility moved its target for full restoration to Sunday, February 12 | Delivery: ice on trees and lines damaged the local system; the report counts "10.5 million trees" damaged | A single address can be dark for days while the rest of the city recovers. Batteries run out. A server in a dark office cannot be reached from anywhere | The server shut down on purpose before batteries drain; schedule access from home (cloud, or a printed copy); the greeting changed; staff calling patients from cell phones |
| May Microburst, May 28, 2025 | Gusts as high as 90 mph and hail up to 1.5 inches; over 72,000 customers out at the peak; everyone who could safely take power again had it back "in four days"; at least 10 damaged poles were "owned and maintained by communications companies" | Structure: wind broke poles; the utility had to "replace 91 poles, 52 transformers and more than 32,000 feet of overhead cable" | Power and internet can fail together, or come back at different times. An office can get its lights back before its internet, or the other way round | A second internet path that does not hang from the same poles; phones that can roll to cell phones; a firewall that switches over by itself |
Two things stand out when the rows sit side by side. First, the length of an outage changes the right move. A battery is the answer to a rotation measured in minutes or hours; it is the wrong answer to Mara, where the useful step was to shut down cleanly and work from somewhere else. Second, the 2025 report's note about communications-company poles is the one line in these three reports that speaks directly to internet and phones, and it leads straight into the next question.
Should an Austin practice have a second internet connection?
An Austin practice that runs cloud practice software, internet-based phones or card terminals over the internet should have a second connection, set to take over automatically. The second path is only worth paying for if it fails for different reasons than the first: a different carrier, a different route into the building, or a wireless path that avoids the poles.
That last point is our reading of Austin Energy's microburst report, not a claim the utility makes. If at least ten broken poles in one storm belonged to communications companies, an office whose two internet lines run down the same street on the same poles may lose both at once. Two bills do not always mean two paths.
Here is how the common options compare. There are no speeds or prices here because they depend on the address and change by carrier.
Second-connection decision table for an existing Austin dental office
| Setup | What keeps working when the main line fails | What it does not cover | When it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| One wired connection, no backup | Anything that stays inside the office: a server-based practice-management system and local imaging, as long as there is power | Cloud-hosted practice software, internet phones, card terminals that process online, e-claims and eligibility checks, patient texting, remote access from home | An office whose software, phones and payments all work without the internet, which is rare now |
| A second wired connection from a different carrier | Everything that leaves the building, if the firewall is set to switch over automatically and the phones re-register on the new path | Damage both lines share: the same poles, the same conduit into the building, or the same equipment room. A power cut at the office stops both | Offices on cloud software or internet phones whose building has two carriers that enter by different routes |
| Cellular failover (a cellular modem attached to the firewall) | Phones, card terminals, schedule and email at a lower capacity; it does not depend on the lines outside the building | Large imaging uploads and cloud imaging may be slow or impractical; it still needs power in the office; towers can be congested or damaged in a wide storm | Single-carrier buildings, or as a third layer behind two wired lines |
| Fixed wireless as the backup path | Similar to a second wired line, through the air instead of the poles | Needs line of sight and power at both ends; heavy ice or wind can affect the antenna | Buildings where a second wired carrier is not available or shares the first line's route |
A backup line that has never carried a real call is a theory. When you set one up, ask for a test with the main line unplugged during a quiet hour: do the phones ring, does the card terminal run a sale, does the cloud schedule load, and does traffic go back to the main line once it returns? Those four checks answer more than any brochure.
To find out what your building can get, ask each carrier, by street address, whether they serve the building, where their line enters it, and whether it arrives overhead or underground. If you are reviewing a dental office network installation in Austin that was done years ago, the same questions show whether the current backup, if there is one, shares the main line's route. For how the firewall, switches and the failover rule are planned as one system, read Legend's page on dental office network design. Once a line is already down, our guide on what to do when the office internet is down handles that first hour.
How do the phones keep ringing when the office can't open?
The phones keep reaching someone when the main number can be forwarded to cell phones from outside the building, the greeting can be changed remotely, and someone owns both logins. Whether the phones are cloud-hosted or an on-site system decides how that is done; the practice makes that choice, and the steps get written down before winter.
Patients judge an outage by the phone. A dark office with a clear recorded message and a callback feels organized; a phone that rings forever, or goes straight to a full voicemail box, feels like the practice has disappeared. After Uri, Jennifer Randall, DAADOM, who served as president of AADOM's Austin chapter, described a ten-day closure in her own office ("Our office was shut down for ten days."). Among her steps for managers: "Change your non-answer/busy message," first to say the office was closed, and later to say it was open again.
What changes by phone type:
- Cloud-hosted phones. The system lives with the phone provider, not in your closet. Forwarding and greeting changes are usually done from a web portal or an app, from anywhere with internet. Desk phones in the office stop with the office internet, but calls can ring on staff cell phones through the app or a forwarding rule.
- An on-site phone system. The controller sits in the closet, often with lines from a phone carrier. If the office loses power or the controller fails, forwarding may have to be set with the carrier directly. Find out how before the storm, and keep the carrier's account number and support line on paper.
- A mix. Some offices keep one analog line for the alarm, the fax or a card terminal. Know which line does what, so that line is not forgotten in the plan.
Decisions to write down this fall:
- Who can forward the main number from home, and whose cell phone receives the calls (plus one backup person).
- Where the forwarding and greeting logins are kept, so they are not only in one person's head.
- Two prepared greetings: "closed because of weather, here is when we will update this" and "open again". Randall's checklist had the same pair: a closed message, then an open one.
- Whether text reminders, online booking and e-fax depend on the same internet line, and who pauses or edits them during a closure.
- How emergency patients reach a dentist while the office is closed.
If the phones are part of a bigger decision, Legend's overview of dental phone systems and our explainer on how VoIP phone systems work in dental offices set out the trade-offs between hosted and on-site phones. The choice of system and provider stays with the practice.
What should run on battery, and for how long?
The network core belongs on battery: the firewall, the main switch, the server or practice-management host, and the phone equipment that needs the switch. The goal is long enough to ride through a short drop and to shut the server down cleanly in a long one, not to keep seeing patients through a multi-day outage.
A battery backup, or UPS (uninterruptible power supply), is a box that keeps equipment running for a short time when the power cuts and protects it from the spikes and sags around an outage. How long "a short time" is depends on how much equipment is plugged in and how old the batteries are, so there is no single figure to aim for. The useful questions are these:
- Is every device in the closet's chain on the battery? A protected server behind an unprotected switch is still unreachable. Trace the path: the carrier's modem or fiber terminal (ask the carrier whether their box has its own battery), the firewall, the switch, the server, and any power-over-Ethernet switch that feeds desk phones and Wi-Fi access points.
- Does the server know when to shut itself down? Many battery units can signal the server to shut down when the battery runs low. If that link was never set up, the server stays on until the battery dies, which is the same as pulling the plug.
- When was the battery last replaced or tested? Batteries wear out quietly. A unit that showed a green light for years can fail on the first real outage.
- What should not be on it? Printers, space heaters and other high-draw devices shorten runtime for the equipment that matters.
The Austin record argues for two settings, not one. During rotating outages like Uri's, the battery carries the network through gaps and the office can reopen quickly when power returns. During long damage outages like Mara's, the right move is a planned shutdown while someone is still on site, because a server that runs its battery to zero in an empty building gains nothing. Decide in advance who makes that call, and at what point.
For workstations, servers and the closet hardware itself, Legend's page on servers and workstations for dental offices covers what belongs in a dental closet and how it is kept current.
Can the schedule and charts be reached from home during a closure?
They can if the practice software is cloud-hosted, or if a current copy of the schedule exists outside the building. A server in a dark or offline office cannot be reached from home, however good the remote-access setup. Imaging stays tied to the office in either case, because the sensors and units are physically there.
This is the question that decides whether a closure is a pause or a scramble. Randall's list put it in one line: "Make sure you can log on to your patient web-based contact site." The point is to confirm, before you need it, that the tools that reach patients work from outside the office, and that someone has tried logging in from a home connection.
Three situations, three answers:
- Server-based practice software, office has power and internet. Remote access into the office works if it was set up securely and tested. Staff can confirm appointments and see charts from home.
- Server-based practice software, office dark or offline. Nothing in the server is reachable. What you have is what you printed or exported beforehand. Randall's fallback, for an office without a web-based patient-contact site, was paper: a printed schedule carrying every patient's home and cell numbers, made before the office closed.
- Cloud-hosted practice software. Open from a laptop at home or a borrowed connection, which solves the problem when only the office is affected. In a citywide outage, staff may not have power at home either, so the printed list still earns its place.
Which of the three describes your office depends on the platform and how it is hosted; Legend supports the IT environment of Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, Archy. For questions about the software and imaging side in particular, see imaging and practice-software support in Austin. If you are weighing whether to move the schedule and charts off a closet server, cloud services for dental practices sets out what moves and what stays local.
What should the office manager do in storm week?
In storm week the office manager's job is to make the closure orderly: shut down equipment, get it off the floor, print the schedule with phone numbers, confirm the patient-contact login works from home, and change the greeting. The IT side should already have tested the battery, the backup and the forwarding.
The first five rows of the first column follow Randall's "Before Closure" steps from the 2021 closure in her order, quoted where she put it best; the last two rows are ours. The second column is what the practice's IT provider should have done well before the forecast turned, so that the office manager's list is short.
Storm-week checklist for an Austin dental office
| Office manager's list | What IT should already have in place |
|---|---|
| Change the greeting to a "closed" message, and keep the "open again" message ready. Randall: "Change your non-answer/busy message" | Forwarding rules written down, with the portal login stored where two people can reach it |
| Shut down workstations and the server before leaving if the outage may be long. Randall: "Turn off computers and servers" | The server set to shut itself down when the battery runs low, and the shutdown steps taped inside the closet door |
| Lift equipment and power strips off the floor. Randall: "make sure electrical equipment is not on the floor" | Closet gear racked or shelved high from day one, so storm week has nothing to lift |
| Log in to the patient-contact or texting system from a home connection. Randall: "Make sure you can log on to your patient web-based contact site" | Remote access tested from outside the office, with multi-factor sign-in |
| If there is no web-based contact site, Randall's fallback: "print out the next weeks of schedules", with each patient's home and cell numbers on the copy | One test restore from the offsite copy done this season, proving the records survive a lost closet |
| Tell staff who calls patients, from which phones, and when the next update goes out | The helpdesk number on the closure sheet, and a named contact at each carrier |
| Note anything that looked wrong before closing: a beeping battery, a warm closet, a flickering light | Battery age and self-test results on record; the closet on surge protection |
Two notes on using this list. Keep it to one printed page that lives at the front desk and in the owner's car, because the version on the server is not reachable when the server is off. And practice the two phone steps once in the fall, on a slow afternoon, so the first time is not the morning of the storm.
The data side of the plan has its own checklist: our Texas backup and recovery checklist walks through what a dental backup should prove, and Legend's page on dental backup and disaster recovery explains the service behind it.
How do you check an existing Austin office network before the next storm season?
Do a short review each fall: closet temperature and power, battery age, Wi-Fi coverage in every operatory, which circuit belongs to which carrier and where each enters the building, guest Wi-Fi kept apart from clinical devices, and who holds every login. It takes an afternoon and finds most of what would fail.
The list below is deliberately short. It is not a rebuild; it is the walk-through an office manager and the IT provider can do together in October, before ice season, and again in late spring, before the windy months.
- The closet. Is it cool, dry and off the floor? Is anything stored on top of the equipment? Is the closet on a circuit shared with a heater or a sterilizer?
- Battery units. How old are the batteries, when did the last self-test pass, and is the server still set to shut down on low battery?
- Wi-Fi in the operatories. Does every room get a steady signal where the chairside device sits, or have staff learned to stand by the door?
- The circuits. Which carrier provides each line, where does each enter the building, does either share poles or conduit with the other, and has failover been tested this year?
- Separation. Is patient Wi-Fi kept apart from the network that carries the server, sensors and workstations?
- Logins and account numbers. Carrier accounts, phone portal, firewall, domain and backup service: who holds each one, and is there a second person?
- Documentation. Is there a current diagram or list of what is in the closet and what each cable feeds? If the person who installed it left, could someone else find their way?
- Security basics. Are the firewall and switches on current firmware, and has anyone reviewed who can sign in remotely?
For the security side, Legend's page on dental cybersecurity services and our Texas dental cybersecurity checklist go further than this list. Walk-throughs like this often raise the bigger question of who should own the network all year; that is the subject of our planned guide to managed IT for Austin dental practices, while practices adding rooms or a second site can read the planned Austin dental practice growth guide.
Where has Legend done network work for Austin-area practices?
Legend's Austin-area project pages describe network work at Little Sprouts Pediatric Dentistry in Leander, Drip Dental in Dripping Springs and Clearview Dental in Austin. These are build and setup projects, described below in each page's own words; none is presented as a storm story.
- Little Sprouts Pediatric Dentistry, Leander (northwest of Austin). Legend's August 2025 post announces the opening and describes "the technology buildout from planning to install: operatories set up for imaging, workstations and networking." Dr. Jonathan McNair's practice is the clearest Austin-area example of the operatory network this page asks you to protect. Read the Little Sprouts project.
- Drip Dental, Dripping Springs (west of Austin). Dr. Sydney Guidroz's project page, from January 2024, lists Legend's scope as "planning, network infrastructure, technology installation and ongoing support". That last item, the support that continues after opening day, is what this page is about. Read the Drip Dental project.
- Clearview Dental, Austin. A startup in progress whose project page lists the "decisions to make during construction": cloud or on-premise systems, structured cabling, internet service, workflow and long-term IT support. Two of those, cloud versus on-premise and internet service, are the same decisions that decide how an office rides out a storm. Read the Clearview project.
Those projects sit inside a longer record. Headquartered in Dallas, Legend Networking has served over 3,500 practices since 2004. Visits follow its published model: onsite dispatch by appointment across served dental markets; remote-first nationwide. Legend provides 24/7 monitoring, and clients call a staffed 24/7 helpdesk at 1-800-794-1588. Staffing is described as in-house engineers; no outsourced first-level triage. Its Google profile shows 4.8 rating · 173 Google reviews. For the full picture of Legend's work in the metro, see our page on Austin and Central Texas dental IT support.
What to ask your IT provider about your network and outage plan
Bring these to your current provider, or to any provider you are considering. Good answers are specific and come with a document or a test result.
- What did our network do during the February 2023 ice storm, and do you have the logs?
- Are both our internet connections on the same poles, or do they reach the building by different routes?
- Which of our devices are on the battery units, and when were those batteries last tested or replaced?
- Is the server set to shut itself down on low battery, and has that been tested?
- If the main internet line fails, what switches over automatically, and when was failover last tested with the line unplugged?
- Do our phones keep working on the backup line, and how do we forward the main number from home?
- Where are the logins for our carrier accounts, phone portal, firewall and backup service kept, and who besides you can reach them?
- When was our offsite backup last restored as a test, and how long did that restore take?
- Can staff reach the schedule from home if the office is closed, and what happens if the office itself is dark?
- Is patient Wi-Fi kept apart from the network our server and sensors use?
- Who do we call during a storm, at what number, and what can be done remotely versus on site?
- After an outage, what do you check before we seat the first patient?
If an answer is "we would have to look into that", that is useful to know in October rather than February.
Frequently asked questions
Our power came back but the internet didn't. Why does that happen?
Power and internet travel on different lines owned by different companies, and they are repaired separately. In the May 2025 storm, Austin Energy counted communications-company poles among the broken ones. A practice can have lights while its carrier is still repairing its own line, which is why a second internet path matters more than a bigger battery.
Is a cellular backup enough for a dental office?
For many single-location offices, cellular failover keeps the essentials going: phones, card terminals, the cloud schedule and email. It is weaker for large imaging uploads and cloud imaging, it still needs power inside the office, and towers can be busy or damaged in a wide storm. It works best as a second or third layer, tested with the main line unplugged.
Do two internet providers protect us if their lines share the same poles?
Not fully. Two providers protect you from a problem inside one company, such as an equipment fault or an account issue. If both lines hang from the same poles or share a conduit into the building, one broken pole can take out both. Ask each carrier where its line enters the building, and whether it arrives overhead or underground, before relying on the pair.
Can patients reach us if ice keeps the office closed for days?
Yes, if forwarding and greeting changes can be made from home. Cloud-hosted phones usually allow both from a portal or app; an on-site system may need the carrier's help. Decide in the fall whose cell phone receives calls, record a closed greeting and an open-again greeting, and print the schedule with patient phone numbers so staff can call out.
Which devices in a dental office belong on a battery backup?
The network core: the firewall, the main switch, the server or practice-management host, and any switch that powers desk phones and Wi-Fi access points. Ask the carrier whether its modem or fiber terminal has its own battery. Leave printers and heaters off the battery. Battery here buys minutes: enough to bridge a flicker and let the server close its database properly.
How do we see tomorrow's schedule if the server is in a dark office?
You cannot reach a server that has no power or internet, so the answer has to be prepared in advance. Print or export the next week or two of appointments with patient phone numbers before a forecast storm, and confirm that the patient-contact or texting system works from a home login. Cloud-hosted practice software removes this step only while staff have power at home.
Is our office on Austin Energy, and does that change the plan?
Austin Energy's figures cover its own customers. Offices in the surrounding counties may be served by another utility or a cooperative, and their outage history differs. Check the utility named on your electric bill. The plan itself does not change much: battery for short gaps, a planned shutdown for long ones, a second internet path, and phones that can be forwarded.
Does Legend's helpdesk answer during a storm?
Legend's clients reach a staffed 24/7 helpdesk at 1-800-794-1588, the same general number used all year, and Legend provides 24/7 monitoring. Visits follow Legend's published model: onsite dispatch by appointment across served dental markets; remote-first nationwide. Put the number on the printed closure sheet so whoever is handling the storm can reach it from a cell phone.
What should we look at every fall before winter?
Walk the closet for heat, dust, water risk and anything on the floor. Check battery age and the last self-test, confirm the server still shuts down on low battery, and test internet failover with the main line unplugged. Confirm who holds the carrier, phone and backup logins, and practice changing the greeting and forwarding the main number once.
The bottom line
When the twelve questions above turn up answers nobody in the office knows, that is a good moment to book a Free Dental IT Assessment. It looks at computers, software, network security, backups and performance, and ends with written findings and prioritized recommendations, so you can see what to fix before ice season rather than during it. Ask for your Free Dental IT Assessment.