Internet Quality monitoring tool?

[hat]

Is there some sort of tool I can use to monitor the quality of my internet connection over a long period of time? I don't play many online games much anymore, but the two I have played (Alien Swarm and Spiral Knights) recently have been giving me lag issues, where it seems I disconnect and reconnect. SK is infamous for this, and ASW seems to be known for shoddy networking as well, but I want to make sure there's nothing bad going on on my end... like make sure I'm not randomly losing connection every so often, that sort of thing.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

http://www.dslreports.com/tools

 

[phreak]

What exactly do you mean? There are ways to see a present connection to an IP address by simply sending ICMP? What exactly do you need?

 

[brandonwh64]

http://www.whatsupgold.com/

 

[digibucc]

What exactly do you mean? There are ways to see a present connection to an IP address by simply sending ICMP? What exactly do you need?

i may be wrong but it seems he wants a tool to log internet connectivity over a period of time. so he can review to see whether he is being disconnected from the internet, or the game.

 

[phreak]

He can just send an icmp request to his ISP's gateway to see if there is any losses.
And there is "Wireshark" which is a tool but I don't know if it would help in this case.

 

[patrico]

what about the DOS ping test,

run cmd.exe (DOS box)

Ping one of the fastest server networks on the Internet, such as Google, to test ping time. Type "ping -t google.com" (without quotes) at the command prompt and hit "Enter."

Ping tells the computer that you want to do a ping test; -t tells it you want to keep pinging until you tell it to stop. In this example, the domain name google.com is the target.

If you want to test your connection speed to a game server and know the IP address, replace google.com with the game server address

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/how_2264111_test-ping-time.html

 

[PainfulByte]

There are three things to consider when looking at network connectivity:

1. Connectivity!

a. This is usually checked with a ping. If you get a ping reply, you have connectivity. Yay.​

2. Latency

a. Two birds, one stone! You can get your latency from a ping result. Pings always return the latency of the response.
b. Wired latency is quite often better than wireless latency, especially in saturated wifi channels​

3. Bandwidth

a. This is how much data can go through the pipe. This is also affected by wireless connection quality.​

For testing ISP reliability, I would go with fping. There is a windows version here: http://www.kwakkelflap.com/fping.html . You can output it to a log, have it with timestamps, you could even make it a scheduled task. Whatever you like.

Bandwidth can be easy to test but a bit more complex to test in an automated fashion. http://www.speedtest.net/ can be good for a one time test.

 

[PainfulByte]

Ping one of the fastest server networks on the Internet, such as Google, to test ping time. Type "ping -t google.com" (without quotes) at the command prompt and hit "Enter."

This is why I prefer fping since you can get timestamps. The standard windows ping command does not give info as to the time and date of a particular ping which is especially useful when used with the -t switch.

 

[digibucc]

I don't disagree that a ping would be the correct method of testing, but i think what is being overlooked is it's a temporary thing. he can't be sure that he is pinging while the connection is still down in the game, as the time it takes to switch out and test it could already be back up. not saying it takes a long time, just saying he probably wants something that pings in the background x times per minute, and logs the results so he can review them after the fact and see what happened.

if the logs show successful pings throughout but the game disconnected for 20 seconds, then it was the game and not the internet.

I would write a shell script for it as i don't know any software that does it, and it's simple enough. edit: fping sounds good

my preferred ping target is google's open dns server, 8.8.8.8 . it's easy to remember, and it cuts out the whole dns layer when troubleshooting.

 

[patrico]

http://download.cnet.com/Ping-Test-Easy/3000-2651_4-10523393.html


A handy, powerful, visual ping & IP scan utility for system administrator to check network connection. Intuitive and graphical interface lets you easy to watch the states of network and test the connection speeds of various locations. It can save IP addresses and hosts name; intuitive interface shows the route, hosts, packet loss percentage, and min/max/average response times. The ping results can be copy to the clipboard or export to a text file

this any good ,, havnt tested it BTW


@digibucc nice one for the 8.8.8.8 port thats a handy one to know thanks

EDIT!!!

@hat have a look at this http://pingtester.net/ , I think this is what you are looking for!!

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

Get a cheap PC with Dual Nics for a pass through. Install Linux distro with Ethereal, Wireshark and Nagios. L33T

 

[patrico]

Get a cheap PC with Dual Nics for a pass through. Install Linux distro with Ethereal, Wireshark and Nagios. L33T

think he just wants a quick software solution m8

 

[neatfeatguy]

I put a script together that monitors ping responses and saves them to a text file - it generates a date/time stamp as well. You just start up the script and enter the IP you're connecting to and you're all set, it runs until you stop it.

Then again, you don't need a script, you can save a ping results to a text file through the command prompt:

1. launch command prompt
2. enter in the following: ping [website OR IP Address] -t > c:\[location you want the file saved]\[name of file].txt
   1. here would be an example: ping www.google.com -t > c:\temp\ping_test.txt
3. leave the command window open, just minimize it to the task bar. when you're done you can simply close the command prompt window or do a ctrl+c
4. Open the save text file and go through and see if you have high ping/latency or if you have any dropped packets

The reason I had to make a script was because I needed the date/time stamp included in my ping results, which the ping command doesn't do.

Or you can try out Ping Tester Pro - basically does what my script does but gives you a GUI to use. I tend to make use of this at work for testing remote sites that claim to have "bad" internet. Usually it turns out to be poor hardware or wiring causing issues.

Then again, as I reply to this thread, I notice I'm 5 days late and you probably already have an answer to your question. Though, I suppose it doesn't hurt to have multiple resolutions for your question.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

think he just wants a quick software solution m8

Where does it say that m8

It is awesome once in place. You check the history and can view every packet, every loss and a what point the loss happened.

 

[patrico]

Where does it say that m8

It is awesome once in place. You check the history and can view every packet, every loss and a what point the loss happened.

lol fair enough buddy just thought that 'Internet Quality monitoring tool?' (I took it as in a tool for his current setup ) ment a bit of software not actual hardware,

but point taken as it doesnt say it anywhere lol

 

[remixedcat]

What router do you have? it might have SNMP support and you can use stuff like PRTG.

 

[hat]

I did want just a simple software solution. I suspect my modem is dropping out every once in a while.

My router is an ASUS RT-N66R

 

[remixedcat]

If you can add that it will display uptime/downtime graphs as well

I have mine tapped into my Meraki access point:

 

[AsRock]

I did want just a simple software solution. I suspect my modem is dropping out every once in a while.

My router is an ASUS RT-N66R

Try 3DTraceroute
http://www.d3tr.de/

You can tell it ping a ip which would show you the hops and delays to the end point.

 

[remixedcat]

How long does it keep logs though? I imagine the OP needs to keep detailed logs he can refer to easily when needed, hence a software like PRTG that keeps data due to an active server and database running.

 

[hat]

I'm pretty sure it's the modem... I can see the damn thing reboot itself all the time...

 

[Mussels]

ping 192.168.1.1 -t

substitute IP if needed, but run one window to your router/modem (one for each if seperate) then one to your ISP, and one to google.com


see which stage the problems occur. make sure no ones downloading or torrenting at the time - i use IDM as a HTTP download manager, and somehow it using 4 HTTP connections to download a single file gives me 100ms+ ping spikes, when nothing else will.

 

[hat]

How would I find the IP of my ISP in order to ping it?

 

[Mussels]

How would I find the IP of my ISP in order to ping it?

run a traceroute

tracert google.com

look for the first IP you get a ping response from after your modem.