My ISP is currently working on a 5 year plan to structurally upgrade their national network. They have mentioned that there can be occasional hiccups in connectivity. I am experiencing such hiccups, but I've been experiencing them since before they started their 5 year plan, so I'm not sure to what extent they're related. It's possible that it might be something on my end.
- I'm using a USB dongle for connectivity instead of a NIC card, and I've been able to trace some connectivity issues to the dongle (but not all);
- My home networking situation is 6 networks: 2 from my Apple Airport (2.4 and 5 Ghz), 1 personal network from my ISP router, 1 network generated by my wireless printer, and 2 public access networks, also from my ISP router. I cannot disable any of these networks. Occasionally, I may receive networks from my router. There might be interference through this system.
- I'm usually connected to the 5 Ghz network from the Airport, which then goes via Ethernet to my ISP router, which then sends it into the world. There might be interference from here.
The main issue is that these connectivity issues are intermittent and short. I mainly notice them because I get kicked out of online games because of them, but by the time I've restarted the game, the hiccup has already been resolved. It's quite annoying because I'm usually right in the middle of something when it happens, which has caused my avatar's death on numerous occasions. These connection issues nearly always happen in pairs, with the second one usually happening around 5 minutes after the first one.
Because of the brief nature of these issues, as well as the unpredictability of the first incident, I don't have the time to figure out why this happens, because by the time I can do something as simple as start a command prompt, the issue is already over. I've considered it might be a dynamic IP change, but that doesn't explain why it happens twice, I think.
I'm hoping to be able to diagnose such connectivity losses, so I can report them to my ISP in a meaningful fashion, but I'm not sure how I even begin figuring out what happens. The shortness of these events prevents me from running normal diagnostics tools, and the seemingly random nature stops me from making any preparations. A bonus complication is that I cannot access the ISP router OR the Apple router remotely, aside from the configuration portals, so I cannot do any telnetting into the machines to do configuration changes or check settings.
What can I do to diagnose these issues?
My machine: windows 10 desktop PC (OEM) with a D-Link 802.11/ac dongle (I'm not sure what model).