Intermittent Drop Out

[Hypopyon]

Hi.  I was wondering what is the best method to see if my internet is intermittently dropping.  I have recently started watching streaming TV (Stan) and it will tell me that I am offline about 8 times during a movie.  It will reconnect almost immediately.  Is there a test that will run continuously for a period of time and measure any drop outs?

 

thanks

[mudmanc4]

@Hypopyon, If this were myself, I would run the auto test, example for a two hour movie scenario:

 

 

 

This test will run for 125 minutes, once every five minutes, testing upload and download minimum 1MB per test run, 'nfw' is selected to reserve bandwidth as were simply getting as close to a connectivity test as we can. (This means the tests will not forward to a larger test size until the test takes seven seconds.  

 

Although I'm not up on the TTL (how long the test server will wait for a response before giving up) therefore the two hour test every five minutes, if your getting eight droputs per movie, you should catch several, in theory.

 

Though in your case, I might be running wireshark , (packet capture) to view the responses during the loss, which can be a bit overwhelming to learn.

 

[Sean]

This is a command line batch file I created a while back that monitors uptime by sending a single ping request to Google every 30 seconds.  If the ping fails 3 times in a row, it displays the time it went down.  It then continuously pings Google until it gets a response, in which case it displays the time it went up and then reverts to pinging every 30 seconds.  It also puts the down/up times in the log file "Outage log.txt" wherever the batch file is saved.

 

To create the batch file, first copy & paste the following into Notepad:

@echo off
set Delay=30

echo Connection log script started: %date% %time:~0,5%
echo Connection log script started: %date% %time:~0,5% >>"Outage log.txt"

:repeat
ping -n %Delay% localhost >nul
ping -n 1 www.google.com >nul &&goto repeat

set OutageTime=%time:~0,5%
set OutageDate=%date%
ping -n 1 www.google.com >nul &&goto repeat
ping -n 1 www.google.com >nul &&goto repeat
echo %date% %time:~0,5% - Internet or DNS connection is down 

:outagerep
ping -n 1 www.google.com >nul &&goto backonline
goto outagerep

:backonline
set UpDate=
if not "%date%"=="%OutageDate%" set UpDate= %date%
echo Link/DNS outage: %OutageDate% %OutageTime% to%UpDate% %time:~0,5% >>"Outage log.txt"
echo %date% %time:~0,5% - Internet or DNS connection is up 

goto repeat

Save it as "LinkTest.bat" somewhere handy such as on the desktop.  Double-click it to run it and leave it minimised while you stream the movie.  To check if the script is working, just disconnect the computer's Internet connection for 30 seconds, after which it should display the time it went down. 

 

The following shows an example with a simulated down time (disconnecting my PC's Wi-Fi briefly):

 

 

If you need it more precise than every 30 seconds, change the 'Delay=30' line above to the number of seconds per interval.

[anthonybee]

For the past year I have been running Net Uptime Monitor (netuptimemonitor.com) on Windows.  I find it excellent. OK, it costs USD 10, but it really works. Every 10 seconds it pings Google, and if no response it will successively ping  two other servers of your choice.  If no response from any of the servers pinged it logs your internet connection as down, logging the time it went down and its duration.  Over the past 24 hrs, for example, it logged my internet failing 84 times, the duration of the fails ranging from 10 secs to 1 hour ! 

 

 

Edited November 8, 2017 by CA3LE
converted address to link

[Hypopyon]

Thank you for your replies.  Most Helpful.  I am trying the batch file Sean has suggested.  It is showing that I am indeed losing internet connection at an alarming frequency.  Now the problem is to find the cause. .......  The setup here is through a modem attached to a router that then has cables to all the devices (PC, Tivo, Smart Tv, Xbox, alarm system etc).  I have attached a laptop running the linktest batch directly to the modem with the idea of seeing if it is a post or pre modem problem.  Any other suggestions?  Early results show some dropping on that laptop but not always at the same time as the PC....