Generating usage logs that prove my Internet connection is flaky

Question

I need a way to generate reports or logs that prove that my Internet connection is flaky. My Comcast connection is very flaky but if I ask their support to send someone over it will probably work fine while the guy is here.

I found and tried "Connection Monitor" from CSGWare Corp but it does not create the kind of reports or graphs I'd need to be able to convince my ISP that their link is intermittent.

What I need to be able to do is have the software monitor my connection and produce a record of when the connection dies or when, for example, ping time climbs dramatically.

Can I get Connection Monitor to do this or is there another program that does?

Answer 1

ping -t comcast.net > log.txt

Show him the log.txt file.

Answer 2

Bash script, with timestamp, so when you show it to Comcast, you can point to exact times when it was down or flaky.

ping comcast.net | while read pong; do echo "$(date): $pong"; done > ~/log.txt

...produces output like this:

Thu Jun  5 00:23:54 CDT 2014: 64 bytes from 0.0.0.0: icmp_seq=235 ttl=55 time=61.848 ms
Thu Jun  5 00:23:55 CDT 2014: Request timeout for icmp_seq 236
Thu Jun  5 00:23:56 CDT 2014: 64 bytes from 0.0.0.0: icmp_seq=236 ttl=55 time=1317.795 

Then, you can monitor it in a different window with tail

tail -f ~/log.txt

Clear and concise. Works for Mac and Linux. Not sure about Windows.

Answer 3

Try running this web-app: http://isp-monitor.appspot.com/

It tests your internet connection every 10 seconds. If you login, it can aggregate results and you can generate a report with connectivity % for the last days or month.

No install. Free to use.

Answer 4

There is a simple tool which checks if it can access an internet site and logs results with time stamps. It is written in Java and will work on any platform.
http://code.google.com/p/internetconnectivitymonitor/

Answer 5

I had a problem with a Comcast connection that lasted three years - dozens of dropouts every day. Finally I wrote a program that continuously tests an internet connection and writes a log of any outages. I showed Comcast the logs and they finally took me seriously and fixed it!

I'm selling the program (free trial, $10 for a license) to help others resolve their problems with their ISP. It's called Net Uptime Monitor - http://www.netuptimemonitor.com. It's a simple program that does exactly what you want - continuously monitors your internet connection and writes a plain text log of every failure that occurs, including the start time and length of the outage.

There's no complicated configuration or anything - it's really a single purpose program, just install it and run it. The logs it generates will help your ISP figure out the problem.

Answer 6

You might want to try DUMeter. There's a 30 day trial version available. Or use Pingdom and let it monitor the availability of your IP address, given that you have a (sort of) fixed IP. Pingdom has a free plan. I'm using Pingdom myself for a number of websites and it proved to be very helpful.

Answer 7

SmokePing provides long-term storage and visualization for various tests including latency and packet loss. Perhaps it would be useful for UNIX/Linux users.

Answer 8

Complain to a Consumer Protection authority. Let them monitor it.

Complaining to an ISP and showing it a ping log file? Come on, guys, you must be kidding. How would you prove the authenticity of a simple text file? How would you prove you didn't write it up yourself?

If you want to monitor your connection, you can set up mrtg. You can even point your ISP to it. But I doubt that'll help. If your provider doesn't treat you fair as a consumer, just quit using its services if you have alternatives.

Answer 9

My cable modem for Time Warner is accessible at a particular address 192.168.xxx.yyy similar to the way a home router is. If I point my browser to that address there is an interface that allows me to see some diagnostic pages including a log of recent activity.

If your connection is dying, it may be that the log will show something that happened at that time. Mine did when I was having a problem: lots of "timeout" and "re-establishing DHCP connection" messages.

Find out the make and model of your cable modem and then try a web search to find out how to access the configurations screens.

I suspect that any cable repair person will check those logs anyway. If there's a discrepancy between the cable modem log and the logs you get from a third-party app, who will they believe?

Answer 10

Use the following command to generate a few different log files to a few different sites.

tracert -d comcast.net > log.txt

this will generate a traceroute and you/they can identify if the flakiness is local to you, on their network, or the backbone network.

Comcast is probably unaware of your service issue. Provided you find a decent contact with their support, they might be able to resolve your issue.

Answer 11

I appreciate this is an older question, but I found it searching for a solution, so I ended up writing one. It's a shell script that checks for internet connectivity, and logs any outages, along with the reconnected link speed. I made it for this exact issue. Feel free to grab it: https://github.com/TristanBrotherton/netcheck

Answer 12

I'd try to describe the problem more precisely than: "My Comcast connection is very flaky"

Does the connection go away altogether? Assuming that there's some kind of "Connected" indicator LED on your modem, does it stay lit or not? Is there a pattern to when it comes and goes?

Or is it that you appear to have connectivity but you can't seem to connect to anything ... web sites, mail servers and the like? In that case, next time it's working right, look up the IP address for a site, then next time the service seems to be out, try connecting to the IP address rather than the www.whatever.xyz address. If it works with the IP address but not with the "friendly" name, it's likely a DNS problem at the ISP end. There are alternate DNS providers you could try in your internet settings to get around this one, at least temporarily.