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I need a way to generate reports or logs that prove that my Internet connection is flaky. My Comcast connection is very flaky but if I ask their support to send someone over it will probably work fine while the guy is here.

I found and tried "Connection Monitor" from CSGWare Corp but it does not create the kind of reports or graphs I'd need to be able to convince my ISP that their link is intermittent.

What I need to be able to do is have the software monitor my connection and produce a record of when the connection dies or when, for example, ping time climbs dramatically.

Can I get Connection Monitor to do this or is there another program that does?

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  • 1
    What OS? Is it a direct connect from computer to whatever you use as a connection? Giving more details will help people trying to help you. Sep 9, 2009 at 20:38
  • Sorry, I should have known enough to do that. I'm in Windows XP Pro and it is a connection through my router to a cable modem.
    – Jay
    Sep 9, 2009 at 20:41
  • If your connection is dropping off intermittently they'll be able to tell on their side if it's their problem. It might be dropping off locally. Prove it's their problem first
    – Ciaran
    Sep 9, 2009 at 21:28
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    Jay, while running whatever tool you choose, make sure your computer is connected directly to the cable modem or results won't count for anything. Feb 13, 2011 at 3:04
  • I'd try to describe the problem more precisely than: "My Comcast connection is very flaky" Does the connection go away altogether? Assuming that there's some kind of "Connected" indicator LED on your modem, does it stay lit or not? Is there a pattern to when it comes and goes? Or is it that you appear to have connectivity but you can't seem to connect to anything ... web sites, mail servers and the like? In that case, next time it's working right, look up the IP address for a site, then next time the service seems to be out, try connecting to the IP address rather than the www.whatever.xyz add Oct 29, 2011 at 17:24

11 Answers 11

34

Bash script, with timestamp, so when you show it to Comcast, you can point to exact times when it was down or flaky.

ping comcast.net | while read pong; do echo "$(date): $pong"; done > ~/log.txt

...produces output like this:

Thu Jun  5 00:23:54 CDT 2014: 64 bytes from 0.0.0.0: icmp_seq=235 ttl=55 time=61.848 ms
Thu Jun  5 00:23:55 CDT 2014: Request timeout for icmp_seq 236
Thu Jun  5 00:23:56 CDT 2014: 64 bytes from 0.0.0.0: icmp_seq=236 ttl=55 time=1317.795 

Then, you can monitor it in a different window with tail

tail -f ~/log.txt

Clear and concise. Works for Mac and Linux. Not sure about Windows.

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  • My Windows 10 results: C:\Users\Michael\My Documents>ping comcast.net | while read pong; do echo "$(date): $pong"; done resulted in 'while' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
    – Michael
    Jan 25, 2020 at 2:52
  • @Michael yeah, while is a unix command. You might be able to get something similar working with a little work: stackoverflow.com/q/1788473/652626
    – allanberry
    Jan 26, 2020 at 22:37
  • 2
    WSL will allow you to do this on Windows 10 (Windows Subsystem for Linux is a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables natively on Windows 10) docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10 Oct 19, 2020 at 8:21
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    used this twice and logged in two files: 1. to ping my proxy and check if my VPN is working and 2. to ping a website directly to check if VPN is lost due to a broken internet connection.
    – Wolfson
    Mar 11, 2021 at 10:17
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ping -t comcast.net > log.txt

Show them the log.txt file.

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    Jay: Type that command into a DOS / Shell prompt. When he shows up, use ctrl-c to abort it. It will generate a file called log.txt which will show the ping results. The log.txt file will appear in the directory your DOS prompt was started in.
    – tsilb
    Sep 9, 2009 at 20:50
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    Just remember to hook that specific computer directly to the Internet, otherwise he may say it's your router Dec 28, 2011 at 16:06
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    @shufler: not for mac: ping: invalid timeout: `google.com'
    – CharlesB
    Dec 9, 2013 at 21:12
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    For Mac (and probably all Unix-based systems), drop the -t switch. Not sure what it does under Windows, but it makes Unix ping interpret "comcast.net" as a timeout period (between pings).
    – TimH
    Jul 7, 2014 at 15:58
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    For Windows ping, the -t switch has it ping continuously until interrupted (the default is to break after 4 requests). Mar 15, 2016 at 17:51
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I had a problem with a Comcast connection that lasted three years - dozens of dropouts every day. Finally I wrote a program that continuously tests an internet connection and writes a log of any outages. I showed Comcast the logs and they finally took me seriously and fixed it!

I'm selling the program (free trial, $10 for a license) to help others resolve their problems with their ISP. It's called Net Uptime Monitor - http://www.netuptimemonitor.com. It's a simple program that does exactly what you want - continuously monitors your internet connection and writes a plain text log of every failure that occurs, including the start time and length of the outage.

There's no complicated configuration or anything - it's really a single purpose program, just install it and run it. The logs it generates will help your ISP figure out the problem.

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There is a simple tool which checks if it can access an internet site and logs results with time stamps. It is written in Java and will work on any platform.
http://code.google.com/p/internetconnectivitymonitor/

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    It doesn't log response time, if the connection drops for tens of seconds you won't notice it.
    – CharlesB
    Dec 9, 2013 at 21:11
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Complain to a Consumer Protection authority. Let them monitor it.

Complaining to an ISP and showing it a ping log file? Come on, guys, you must be kidding. How would you prove the authenticity of a simple text file? How would you prove you didn't write it up yourself?

If you want to monitor your connection, you can set up mrtg. You can even point your ISP to it. But I doubt that'll help. If your provider doesn't treat you fair as a consumer, just quit using its services if you have alternatives.

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    It may not prove that the connection is dropping to them, but it will give them an exact time to check their logs which will make them more likely to actually check them compared to if they have to hunt through their logs looking for an "uh... my connection keeps dropping".
    – Hello71
    Feb 13, 2011 at 2:59
  • Your average consumer protection agency likely already monitors Comcast, and surely won't setup a custom rig just for your connection. So it's mostly useless to bother them. Besides, as I understand it, this is not for proof in a legal sense, but to provide a tech with help in troubleshooting. A lot of us don't have any option except Comcast, so we use what tools we're able.
    – allanberry
    May 20, 2015 at 16:49
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SmokePing provides long-term storage and visualization for various tests including latency and packet loss. Perhaps it would be useful for UNIX/Linux users.

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You might want to try DUMeter. There's a 30 day trial version available. Or use Pingdom and let it monitor the availability of your IP address, given that you have a (sort of) fixed IP. Pingdom has a free plan. I'm using Pingdom myself for a number of websites and it proved to be very helpful.

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  • I'm running Pingdom now - beginning to receive results from it. Might be a big help. Thanks for the lead.
    – Jay
    Sep 9, 2009 at 21:34
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    DUMeter does not report ping times or connectivity issues. It reports bandwidth usage only. It is not suitable for the OPs use-case.
    – Andris
    Aug 8, 2013 at 11:45
1

My cable modem for Time Warner is accessible at a particular address 192.168.xxx.yyy similar to the way a home router is. If I point my browser to that address there is an interface that allows me to see some diagnostic pages including a log of recent activity.

If your connection is dying, it may be that the log will show something that happened at that time. Mine did when I was having a problem: lots of "timeout" and "re-establishing DHCP connection" messages.

Find out the make and model of your cable modem and then try a web search to find out how to access the configurations screens.

I suspect that any cable repair person will check those logs anyway. If there's a discrepancy between the cable modem log and the logs you get from a third-party app, who will they believe?

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  • Both of the Comcast boxes I had responded on 192.168.100.1.
    – LawrenceC
    Feb 13, 2011 at 3:45
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I appreciate this is an older question, but I found it searching for a solution, so I ended up writing one. It's a shell script that checks for internet connectivity, and logs any outages, along with the reconnected link speed. I made it for this exact issue. Feel free to grab it: https://github.com/TristanBrotherton/netcheck

netcheck

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To complete the very good solution of @allanberry you can just use the tee command to display the result while writing to the file

ping comcast.net | while read pong; do echo "$(date): $pong"; done | tee ~/log.txt
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Use the following command to generate a few different log files to a few different sites.

tracert -d comcast.net > log.txt

this will generate a traceroute and you/they can identify if the flakiness is local to you, on their network, or the backbone network.

Comcast is probably unaware of your service issue. Provided you find a decent contact with their support, they might be able to resolve your issue.

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