Internet monitoring software

[Downunder]

Hello, Is there a program which can monitor my internet connection. I keep having brief pauses(a few seconds) in my connection which sometimes cause a disconnection. My ISP blames my computer. But I'm not so sure.

 

All programs connected to the internet at the time cannot transmit or receive.

 

Tried disabling my anti virus but no different. I'm on cable.

 

Regards,

 

R J Mitchell

 

 

[Simonflyer]

Checkout speedtest.net

 

Its actually for checking the speed of your connection, but it may have other utilities im not aware of..

 

Cheers

 

 

[slartibartfast]

Presuming you have Windows, you should also use the task manager performance stuff, and the inbuilt performance monitors to see what's going on.

 

I had one show symptoms like that, and I traced it to a problem with the onboard dual NICs (Network Interface Cards). They were fighting each other in a very Parliamentary manner, instead of working together. Disabling one solved the issue (a firmware upgrade later fixed the issue).

 

 

[MrH]

If you are on ADSL could be a bad connection on line in.

 

If you hear scratchy noises on your phone I'd get Telstra in to check the line in to you.

 

H

 

 

[Ross]

If you are on cable, the cable usually might serve a whole street with its limited capacity.

 

So normally the more users that are active the less capacity each one has access to thus causing delays in cable traffic.

 

Trying the connection at times when there is less likely to be heavy traffic might give better service indicating the capacity of the cable is unsatisfactory at normal times.

 

 

[Dave1]

Something to try

 

You could download "The Dude" from here: MikroTik Routers and Wireless

 

Set it up to monitor 2 things - Your modem's IP address and a website IP address (eg. 66.102.7.99 for Google). You will see when you lose connection with just the internet or your modem.

 

Alternatively. If it fairly reliably goes down, go to a command prompt (Click Start ==> Run and type "cmd", then click "OK". type in "ping" and the IP address of your modem to see if you get a reply from it. If you do get a reply, there isn't an issue with your computer talking to your modem, then try pinging google if you don't get a reply you know it's an issue with your modem connecting to the net.

 

This is what it looks like when you successfully ping something:

 

C:\>ping 172.16.74.254

 

 

 

Pinging 172.16.74.254 with 32 bytes of data:

 

 

 

Reply from 172.16.74.254: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255

 

Reply from 172.16.74.254: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=255

 

Reply from 172.16.74.254: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255

 

Reply from 172.16.74.254: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255

 

 

 

Ping statistics for 172.16.74.254:

 

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

 

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

 

Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 8ms, Average = 2ms

 

Here's what it looks like when you can't ping something:

 

C:\>ping 172.16.74.253

 

 

 

Pinging 172.16.74.253 with 32 bytes of data:

 

 

 

Request timed out.

 

Request timed out.

 

Request timed out.

 

Request timed out.

 

 

 

Ping statistics for 172.16.74.253:

 

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

 

 

 

If you want to continually ping something add "-t" at the end. eg. ping 192.168.1.1 -t

 

To stop it, press Ctrl+C

 

 

[Downunder]

Hello all, Sorry for the late reply but I've been away working.

 

I'll give your sugestions a try. Thanks for your help.

 

Regards,

 

R J Mitchell

 

 

[GraemeK]

Try Pingplotter.

 

It will give you timings to each node between you and the website you're trying to reach - you'll be able to see where the bottleneck is occurring (eg whether it's just a slow website, or whether one of your ISP's routers is a problem).