Missing tests are not documented

[CrazyAboutNature]

At times, perhaps because there is a timeout (?), no data is returned.  When the details are graphed out, they are continuous and just skip missing data and treat it as though there was no gap in the time period.

I'm trying to show my ISP when their performance is slow, or when there are total gaps in it, but these graphs and data results don't help to document when a report could not / was not generated.  In several cases I have documented this to be when other available speediest are either timing out or showing grossly underperforming speed.  There was a 4-5 hour gap in the data this morning, and I have no clue whether the utility was timing out or if something else was going on.

[CA3LE]

Hello @CrazyAboutNature Welcome to TestMy.net!

 

I have a new unreleased tool I think will help in your situation.

 

Give me a little bit, I'll enable it on your account and guide you on how to use it.

[CrazyAboutNature]

Thanks!

[CA3LE]

Visit TestMy.net's homepage, it should ask you to give your browser a name.

Once that's set, visit https://testmy.net/sensor/client (link at the top of the page and in the menu where it shows latency)

 

look for the settings button

 

 

Make sure "Casual" is OFF and "Notify on Down" is ON.

 

 

Click "Test My Notifications" to ensure you're getting emails.  Note that this is a beta and push notifications are still being ironed out.  Email notifications are reliable.

 

Any browser you sign into TestMy.net with can now be controlled by your other browsers.  I recommend opening one extra window to sit in the background as a sensor target.  I do this myself using docker, raspberry pis or other lower power computers I can leave on all the time.  But any web browser will do the trick. 

 

The idea is that it sits there and monitors the connection, with graphing every 5 seconds.  You can monitor this from any of your other devices logged into testmy.net.  Keep in mind, this closed so sharing URLs will not work for other people.  If you need to share results you can screenshot or ask me and I may enable it for you.

 

My Sensor is not meant to replace the Automatic Speed Test, rather to compliment it.  It's meant to be run 24x7x365 and use almost no bandwidth.  Combining the two tools together can give you much deeper insight.  And will alert you exactly when the issue is happening which might help you troubleshoot it.  Just leave My Sensor on a tab in the background.  --- I have multiple occurrences over the past few years running this tool where it alerted me to an issue BEFORE the connection actually went out.  It's really good.

 

Having said that, I consider this an early Alpha release because I'm still figuring out what I've built.  Not even sure if most people will understand what it's doing.  I do know that it's useful, at least for me.  It has some quirks, it's not perfect but I've been running it non-stop for years.  Still figuring it out.

 

I haven't gone into the program as a new user in a long time, so we'll have to see if everything connects up the way it's supposed to.  I may need to pseudo-signin to your account if there are issues.  You'll know it's working when you see a little heartbeat and it says "awaiting instructions" -- you may need to click "activate this tab" first.

 

 

(see how I can see all of my connected devices and remotely activate them)

 

From other computers it looks like this..

Here you can see the periodical graph (gray) which graphs 5 minute averages on top of the 5 second graph (dark blue).

 

This should give you a fine grained idea of what's happening, always.

 

Let me know when you're testing like this so I can watch your results and make sure things are working correctly.

 

- Damon

[CrazyAboutNature]

Just encountered another problem - the instance of testmt.net that I was running stopped for some reason, around 10:30AM (PST), even though I seemed to be getting bandwidth at that time.  I just restarted it to run every 15 minutes.  (Also some other issues, like displaying "my averages", seems to display previous day and not let me display current day in progress.  On My Details, the upper chart displays no vertical lines showing hour or data between the data.)

 

When you say start a new browser, do you mean browser instance (like another Safari window for testmy.net?  Or, are you suggesting a simplified browser that can run with little impact on the computer or other apps running?  I don't have any working knowledge of docker / raspberry pi.

 

I've been checking for messages and checking my email so I've seen your replies without issues.

 

My Sensor - is that running periodic latency tests only?  Seems like I bumped into that because I recognize the curve output.

 

I may be a little slow on the uptake here...

 

Thanks. 

 

 

[CA3LE]

I pulled up your averages for the past day without issue by selecting today's date.

 

https://testmy.net/myaverage?q=CrazyAboutNature&dateFull=02-11-2023

 

Click the red icon to reset to default.

 

You don't need Docker or anything special.  Just open another browser tab.  Change the settings "Casual" OFF and "Notify on Down" ON (found on https://testmy.net/sensor/client).  Then leave that tab running.  

 

It will draw graphs of your latency and notify you if your connection goes down.  

 

Run the Automatic Speed Test the same way as you normally do, in a separate tab from My Sensor.

[CrazyAboutNature]

Thanks.  I do see a result for 2/11/23, now that I see how to choose a date, but it already has an average for 11PM in the further!?

Another issue I notice, is when I changed from a 5-min period to a 15-min period between samples, it still shows on the graph with the same size gap between them (the "My Details" graph.  The averages chart shows the gap when readings were not taken or available, although the My Details chart just assumes consecutive data points without a time scale.  I can probably make use of the averages chart instread (unless there are regular stray data points like the 11PM that hasn't occurred yet).

 

 

[CA3LE]

Sorry it's confusing, when looking at My Results there is no time scale.  They're sorted by time but the chart auto adjusts.  It won't show blank areas.

 

What I think it's doing when you put in a single date is pulling the 24 hour period around the date.  So it's getting the 11PM results from 2/10/23.  You can see this by clicking result details (on the My Average) which will filter the results the same way so you can see the details included in your My Average query.  Then maxing the number of results per page makes it easier to find that 11PM result.

 

https://testmy.net/quickstats/CrazyAboutNature?type=user_name&q=CrazyAboutNature&clientTime=1&dateFull=02-11-2023&dateXi=0&limit=250

 

I'll have to dig into the code and make adjustments there.  When I say "2/11/2023" ... I don't mean an approximation of that date, lol.  I'll need to look with more detail to see what's actually happening to that query.  Thank you for pointing that out.

 

I'm observing your sensor results now and I see there are some bugs I need to address before you can try that out.  I just updated php a couple of days ago and I'm still catching things.

 

Give me a couple of days to iron it out and I'll get back with you.  Works fine on all my accounts so it's something in the setup of a new user in the system, I need to run a new test account to trace the error.

[CrazyAboutNature]

Don't worry about it on my account, but if you're looking to improve your tool and it helps to do that, go for it.

 

It's been a long time since I've actively done any coding.  Looked at php many years back, but wasn't doing anything with it.  I've been in IT most of my life, on the project management side.  My brother and my son are CSEs, and my father was involved in "Data Processing" way back when.  Seems to have been planted in our family.

 

I had Comcast before moving several months ago, but the complex of homes I'm in now apparently does not have the infrastructure to support it, although the Comcast site implies they support my location.  I assume my provider is coming across some of the Comcast infrastructure.  They only charge 50% of the price, but only provide 25% of the channels, 5% of the bandwidth (I previously had 1.2Gbps), and don't provide the landline I had before!

 

I did get the latency window running.  Now just need to cut down on some of the 30 windows I have open!

 

Thanks.

[CrazyAboutNature]

FYI: Not sure, my latency window may have died?  Not seeing a note saying "resuming OSD updates..." but not seeing anything change after that.

[CrazyAboutNature]

The app stopped running again about 2 hours ago but just now noticing...

[CA3LE]

Sorry I wasn't clear before.  I had to disable it because I noticed a bug of some kind.  Need to investigate before I can re-enable that for you.

 

 

[CrazyAboutNature]

no problem

[CA3LE]

I fixed some bugs and re-enabled My Sensor on your account.

 

Wasn't expecting it to just click back into gear but it did.  Probably because you have an auto test running it was able to reload... once it's loaded it does its thing.  In other words, it picked up where it left of.

 

Hopefully that didn't mess up your automatic test (by taking over its window).  Let me know if it did.

 

I think the issue you might be running into has to do with Safari's low power settings.  I'll have to do more testing under Safari to be sure.  Safari may be sleeping the inactive tabs.  It may do this when there's memory pressure.  How much RAM does your Mac have?  Do you have a lot of tabs or other applications open?

 

It may just be Safari in general.  Get Chrome or Firefox to avoid these 'optimizations' Safari has.

 

I'm (pseudo) signed in under your account so I can watch more closely.  So you'll see my browser in your list.

 

 

The 'Bug' I was seeing when we first tried this may have actually been Safari --- still a behavior I need to code for but I think the program itself was running as it was programmed.  --- it just encountered a situation it wasn't prepared to deal with.

 

When we see that loop again I'll correct it.

 

Edit: I can see your automatic test is running normally.  It just fired.

 

Just to be clear to everyone, when/if I pseudo sign-in into your account I don't have your password or anything like that.  It's a backend option I have that makes the system think I'm you... your passwords are hashed in the database.  Not even I can see them.
 

[CA3LE]

I just watched your connection get all crappy... then die... and come back online.

 

[CA3LE]

I had the bandwidth module enabled so it's running extra upload tests every 15 minutes, it happened to test right around that time.  Your upload speed was 1/2 speed at the time the connection got weird.

 

I turned the bandwidth module off just now because we don't want it conflicting with the automatic test you have running.

[CA3LE]

When you get to your computer, open a new browser that we can use as a Sensor target.

 

Get Chrome or Firefox, open testmy.net and sign-in.  When prompted to label your browser, call it something like "Chrome Sensor".  On that browser navigate to https://testmy.net/sensor and click [activate this tab].

 

The reload of the automatic speed test will most likely cause issues if it's in the same window.

 

I don't think that explains the latency swings but running within the automatic test may cause the sensor to detect downtime that isn't present.

[CA3LE]

I adjusted the downtime (sensor) to 90 seconds to give enough time when it's running within the automatic test.

 

... I haven't tested it like that but it appears you're running it that way.

 

I still recommend running in a separate window but it looks to me like it's doing what it's supposed to do.  Just had to make a little adjustment.

[CA3LE]

I'm going to do a "Graph Mark" -- which will restart the graph while retaining the old results.

 

 

Nice fresh start from here forward.

[CA3LE]

Pretty sure you just went down again.

 

 

For about 3 minutes.

[CrazyAboutNature]

When you say "My Sensor", is that the same as "test my latency?"

 

I see the ongoing testing of throughput/speed went down, I may have inadvertently affected it by putting the iMac in sleep mode which I sometimes do when sleeping.  Despite this, I see it did do a test once an hour during this period, between 3 and 6am.  SO I guess it's hard for me to say, when it had dropped off a couple days ago, whether this was timing out due to the extremely low bandwidth speed tests, or whether some of it might have been for this reason, although I know that part of that time it was causing time outs or super low speeds on the other internet speed tests.  Interestingly, since I reported the super slow speeds overnight to the ISP, I see they have not been occurring over the weekend, although I don't have visibility of speeds during the outage period noted above (3-6AM).

[CA3LE]

7 minutes ago, CrazyAboutNature said:

When you say "My Sensor", is that the same as "test my latency?"

 

My Sensor is a more advanced version of Test My Latency, meant to run constantly.  You're actually the only person besides myself with access to it right now.

 

Keep it running and when you get an alert that your connection is down go to your computer to investigate.

 

Have you restarted all of your networking equipment, router, modem, etc?

[CrazyAboutNature]

I haven't restarted today but did a couple days ago.  It did not seem to be helping with the problem.  Will try and figure out where to initiate as My Sensor instead of just my latency. 

 

I haven't gotten any alerts about being down, unless those are hidden amongst my emails.

 

I'm going to have to check out to get some sleep and hopefully I can concentrate better later (perhaps not all of this conversation is best for user group)

 

Thanks.

[CrazyAboutNature]

FYI:  My system crashed about 2:40PM (PST) or so.

 

Also, you asked about my memory... 8GB.  My system is challenged however, in that my internal hard drive (multi-TB) and solid state drive (half TB) are not working, and running my iMac off two external drives (each 8TB), and I boot from there.  It's all made me think about going back to Windows more than once.

[CrazyAboutNature]

I tried the "Test My Notifications" this AM and noticed it doesn't send me anything.  Is it sending it to "Testmy" email address instead?  I noticed for my sensor that is the email address listed under "Add Notify Email", and I can't currently change, perhaps because this is just a temporary use of My Sensor...?  I thought the app had been down all night for me, because when I refreshed "My Results" it didn't show anything since last night, but this was because the data chosen was still yesterday.  I went looking for some indication that my sensor had caught it going down, realized I might not be set up for notifications.  Finally I realized even thought I refreshed my results and chose MAX records, that I needed to update the date.   Thanks!