How to Monitor Connection Outages?

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CD

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Wannabe Geek

#214396 9-May-2017 16:22

Basic question from an non-IT savvy person, please.

Have an ongoing, frustrating issue in our office. We use Spark for communications/internet etc. and have problems with our internet connection dropping out. Today its dropped out about 3 times, for up to 15 minutes at a time. Most drop-outs are much sorter duration. When we have raised this with Spark in the past w e have been told they have 'checked' it, and no problems have been detected. Also, they have told us 'your connection has only been out once today', when we know we have been out a number of times!

Seems to be there just ahs to be a means of us monitoring these drop-outs, and determining 'what side' of the router (i.e. in our network in the building, or before it gets into the building?) it is occurring? That way we will have some facts to deal with, rather than just 'he said, she said'?

TIA.

Dynamic

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#1778601 9-May-2017 16:39

Hi Chas

That sounds incredibly frustrating.

It's possible that the WiFi in your router is misbehaving. Have you any computers in the office connected to the router via a cable? If not, perhaps connect one up (and turn off the WiFi on that computer). The next few times there is an outage, check if that computer can still access the internet. If it can, and you can establish this is a pattern, then replace the router. Ideally get another router from Spark so there is only one direction to point the finger if there is a future problem.

Are you techy-enough to bring up a DOS (Command) prompt and run a PING test? The command would be ping 8.8.8.8 -n 3600 which will run one test every second for an hour. Try it in advance of a problem and you'll see plenty of numbers. As long as you are seeing a response with plenty of numbers, you are fine. If you see request timed out, that would help to confirm a problem, but not isolate where that problem is.

You can ask Spark whether you have a Static IP Address, and if so let me know what it is. I can add it to our monitoring systems for a few weeks and report outages to you via email. If you see outages but do NOT get an email from our systems, that would suggest the issue is internal to your network and getting someone IT savvy to come and have a look would be worthwhile Static IP Addresses usually cost $5-$10 per month, so if you add it to your account for the purpose of this troubleshooting, make yourself a diary note to have it removed in a few months.

Cheers
Mike

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DarkShadow

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#1778602 9-May-2017 16:43

CD:

Also, they have told us 'your connection has only been out once today', when we know we have been out a number of times!

This indicates the problem is on your side. For example, are you on WiFi?

I believe Spark has quite powerful tools that logs every disconnection/connection event. If there's only one dropout then it shows the problem on your side. @hio77 can confirm that

olivernz

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#1778605 9-May-2017 16:47

just do

ping www.stuff.co.nz

every so many seconds.Record the failures. Easy under unix. Not sure how to do it under Windows

Try something like https://netuptimemonitor.com/

hio77

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#1778607 9-May-2017 16:51

DarkShadow:

CD:

Also, they have told us 'your connection has only been out once today', when we know we have been out a number of times!

This indicates the problem is on your side. For example, are you on WiFi?

I believe Spark has quite powerful tools that logs every disconnection/connection event. If there's only one dropout then it shows the problem on your side. @hio77 can confirm that

Tools are only as powerful as the ones who use them ;)

@CD sounds like a business connection which is what i work on 95% of the time, please DM me your line number or account number and i'll follow through with a look over the connection.

Absolutely we can monitor things, just as every isp can.

Chorus provide RSP's tools to be able to monitor the physical copper connection, this has to be ran reactively however as that comes down to how the Network Analyzers work.

Almost all RSP's will have a radius log, where they will see the software layer of the connection.

Past this, is ofcourse internal disconnects.

Now internal disconnects gets to a difficult place to track..

- Typically this is simple WiFi connectivity issues

- no data transfer issues is the second most common case, this is typically caused by upstream congestion.

- the final and most difficult to deal with is NDT on the chorus network, I have only had one ever case of this and the solution did take quite some time to get to.

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hio77

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#1778608 9-May-2017 16:52

olivernz:

just do

ping www.stuff.co.nz

every so many seconds.Record the failures. Easy under unix. Not sure how to do it under Windows

Try something like https://netuptimemonitor.com/

Careful using ICMP for monitoring downtime, this is one of the most de-prioritized network traffic often being the first to be dropped on many borders..

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#1778613 9-May-2017 17:12

www.uptimerobot.com has a quick and easy set up. (5 min granularity with free version) Or roll your own with MRTG / smokeping / Nagios.

Ideally, you would want to monitor every path that your data can travel (e.g. primary & redundant link) and every hop along that way (e.g. device <-> core switch <-> internal port of firewall <-> external port of fw <-> telecoms router <-> internet facing IP <-> outside monitoring solution.

If you are a Microsoft Enterprise customer, you should also have access to SCOM / OMS (requires techie assistance & generally is a big project to roll out).

Please keep this GZ community vibrant by contributing in a constructive & respectful manner.

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CD

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Wannabe Geek

#1778998 10-May-2017 11:15

Thanks for the replies....the issues are with PC's that all connect via Ethernet....so not a wifi matter.

Regards

hio77

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#1779000 10-May-2017 11:19

CD:

Thanks for the replies....the issues are with PC's that all connect via Ethernet....so not a wifi matter.

Regards

in that case i'd certainly like to look over things for ya, atleast to give you direction to the best of my ability.

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Dynamic

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#1779004 10-May-2017 11:23

Good as gold. I wouldn't muck around with it, and just order a replacement router from Spark.

Note if you have more than 3 devices connected to your network cables, you MAY have a Network Switch (examples below) which splits the network cable. This has electronics inside, and they occasionally fail, but not as often as broadband routers. If this was the failing item, your computers would likely be warning you that a network cable was unplugged and/or computer-to-computer communication such as file sharing or printer sharing would stop working.

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