how do i prove internet keeps dropping?

[kennysarmy]

Our RM provided router which gets us on the SWGfL is having problems with 2 of the ports completely dead.

I suspect one of the working ports to be playing up too.

RM has said they will likely just swap out the dead ports.

The reason I think there is a connection issue with the working port is my IM software keeps dropping me off and occasionally web pages do not come up.

I've done ping tests but think the problem may appear for such a short space of time that maybe ping is OK.

Is there any other (free) way to test a connection dropping between client PC and router?

thanks.

[Michael]

If you open up a command prompt and type:

ping 192.168.1.1 -t

Then press enter, this will allow you to keep pinging until you close the command window. Of course replace 192.168.1.1 with the IP of your router.

[tarquel]

You could try longer pings, and longer packets in the pings

Leave it on continual pinging until you stop it too perhaps.

[mark]

You can get free ping gui utilities that chart connections that'd be useful for this.

[FN-GM]

I would ping something external like google, they cant argue then

[kmount]

IM software is typically more tolerant than pings.

I'd be inclined to set up a constant ping to more than 1 external host as well as possibly if possible an internal one and pipe it into a logfile for each timestamped so you can cross compare to see whether you lose all connectivity, or just to those outside of your uplink.

We had to do this recently to prove a point, and it worked a treat.

Good luck.

[Geoff]

Also scan the router and see if it responses to snmp queries. If so you can monitor that for link loss.