Reply to: Keep a log of internet service issues?

[Baddish]

I run a constant

ping -t google.com

window on my main PC which runs 24/7 and this will catch my eye if the ping suddenly jumps from 20ms to 1000ms which tends to precede a problem, or will report outages you might not notice in everyday computer use. But it doesn't log anything. I don't want to log all the results as it will end up a big log file.

Can any Powershell (for preference) experts give me any ideas how I could run a similar script, which would continue to stream to my command window but also write problematic entries to a log file?
Or would I be better to spend an hour writing my own little C# application rather than faffing about?

---

(We have persistent intermittent internet supply issues on our FTTC supply - short outages somewhat often and longer outages or prolonged very slow speeds. We're an isolated house with a overhead line at the limit what the cabinet can supply but still typically get a 30/6 sort of speed... except it seems to be increasingly unreliable. Had the engineer out a few times but there's never a fault when he's here. He suspects our internal CAT6 wiring or mesh WiFi is the problem but anyway)

Have you taken it into conssideration that the latency may not be due to issues inbound to your router whether this is ISP related or infrastucture related?

Sometimes atmospheric conditions can affect the transferrence of data within my house even when the speed at the router is good and even when I am accessing the network from the same position in the house as I was yesterday. This is the only variable as far as I can see.

[DealorNoDeal]

We had an issue just now - ping jumped to 2000ms, speed to a crawl. I managed to do a Quiet Line Test and there were definitely some sounds, but before I could do anything else it went back to normal performance.

Noisy lines are hard to pinpoint where the fault is, and even worse when it's intermittent. Been there.

[d000hg]

I remember we had a similar problem and so did some of our neighbours who use different ISPs and all of us had had engineers out who did lots of technical stuff but couldn't find the problem. We eventually got a tip top engineer who called the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Network_Agency) and this engineer traced the problem right back to the source. One of our neighbours, an elderly lady, had a dodgy power supply for some piece of equipment and everytime she plugged it in, it sent faults through the various network and power lines back to the junction box causing these fluctuations. We got her to replace it and no problems since...

Reminds me of this story https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/22/u...gbr/index.html

We had an issue just now - ping jumped to 2000ms, speed to a crawl. I managed to do a Quiet Line Test and there were definitely some sounds, but before I could do anything else it went back to normal performance.

[hobnob]

Can any Powershell (for preference) experts give me any ideas how I could run a similar script, which would continue to stream to my command window but also write problematic entries to a log file?

This might be redundant (now that other people have pointed out GUI tools), but here's a basic PowerShell script that would do what you want:

$target = "www.google.co.uk"
$logfile = "C:\Temp\ping.txt"

while ($true) {
    $ping = Test-Connection -ComputerName $target -Count 1
    Write-Output $ping
    if ($ping.ResponseTime -gt 1000) {
        Get-Date | Out-File -FilePath $logfile -Append
        $ping | Out-File -FilePath $logfile -Append
    }
}

Obviously you can change the values to suit your circumstances.

[darmstadt]

I remember we had a similar problem and so did some of our neighbours who use different ISPs and all of us had had engineers out who did lots of technical stuff but couldn't find the problem. We eventually got a tip top engineer who called the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Network_Agency) and this engineer traced the problem right back to the source. One of our neighbours, an elderly lady, had a dodgy power supply for some piece of equipment and everytime she plugged it in, it sent faults through the various network and power lines back to the junction box causing these fluctuations. We got her to replace it and no problems since...

[DealorNoDeal]

PS. when we had the landline broadband, I occasionally used to run this script to keep a log of the ping times

Save this in test.bat

@echo off

:loop
echo ======== %TIME%
ping -n 1 www.google.co.uk
echo.
timeout /t 600 /nobreak > NUL
goto loop

In a cmd window, run this

test > test.txt

[DealorNoDeal]

You mentioned that you've seen the speed throttled back. The cards in the cabinet do this to minimise packet loss, and invariably it's caused by poor line quality (hissing, crackling) so it's definitely worth doing a quiet line test when it's running slowly. When we had a really bad line, it would sometimes throttle it back to old fashioned modem speed.

On one occasion, Openreach did find the card we were connected to was faulty, so that could be a possibility.

We used to get at least one line fault a year, and it sometimes took up to 2 weeks to fix it, which is why we ended up giving up on the landline and switching to mobile.

[d000hg]

Yeah it's on the list of things to do. We got PlusNet to send a replacement router (2.0 apparently whatever that means) to try and rule out something obvious too, or at least make life easier dealing with support that we're not doing anything unusual.

[DealorNoDeal]

When it starts complaining I generally see everything else go wrong... VPN connection to my client, etc... and it's typically a precursor to the connection dropping entirely. So it's not perfect but seems to be good enough in practice. Good point though.

Do you have a telephone sharing the same line? If so, do a quiet line test (see below). Quite often when our's was playing up, the line was noisy.

See Line testing:
https://www.clouddirect.net/knowledg...-phone-testing

ps. rather than testing it at the master socket, try it first in the socket the router is plugged into.

[d000hg]

When he plugs his special box in, I suspect he takes off the front plate before hand

Do you still use a landline? If not, remove the top of the front plate and try connecting your router in there.

(Also, the plus net router isn't too bad)

He does indeed. Since his A/B test was all my kit connected Vs directly into the plate, in hindsight I could have got him to test with my router plugged directly in and nothing else, though technically he's only supposed to test up to the socket.

We live in the sticks and used to be plagued by network problems. Unfortunately, there's a lot of overhead wire between us and the cabinet and it was forever getting damaged by the wind or shotgun pellets. Openreach often tried to point the finger at our wiring/equipment but it never was. In the end, we ditched the landline and switched to mobile broadband.

They seem to have done a decent amount of investigation everywhere from the cabinet to my house. We have an overhead cable up the drive (100m) and he's tested from the pole to the house, pole to cabinet and a few other access points (he says) without finding anything much. A previous engineer visit found some old bits which were replaced and they have changed other bits just to be sure.

What would be useful is if you could ping the IP address of a gateway or server (DHCP, DNS etc), within the ISP's network, that sits between your router and the ISP's connection to the internet.
Unfortunately, I've never been able to find such an IP address. The trouble with pinging the likes of bbc.com is you never know if the problem is with your ISP, the internet or the network of the server you're pinging (bbc).

When it starts complaining I generally see everything else go wrong... VPN connection to my client, etc... and it's typically a precursor to the connection dropping entirely. So it's not perfect but seems to be good enough in practice. Good point though.

[DealorNoDeal]

What would be useful is if you could ping the IP address of a gateway or server (DHCP, DNS etc), within the ISP's network, that sits between your router and the ISP's connection to the internet.

Unfortunately, I've never been able to find such an IP address. The trouble with pinging the likes of bbc.com is you never know if the problem is with your ISP, the internet or the network of the server you're pinging (bbc).

[DealorNoDeal]

We live in the sticks and used to be plagued by network problems. Unfortunately, there's a lot of overhead wire between us and the cabinet and it was forever getting damaged by the wind or shotgun pellets. Openreach often tried to point the finger at our wiring/equipment but it never was. In the end, we ditched the landline and switched to mobile broadband.

There are times when it runs slow but that could be anywhere within the Telco's network or even beyond their network.

Sometimes tracert might give a clue as to where the bottleneck is.

tracert bbc.com

[WTFH]

When he plugs his special box in, I suspect he takes off the front plate before hand

Do you still use a landline? If not, remove the top of the front plate and try connecting your router in there.

(Also, the plus net router isn't too bad)

[d000hg]

The engineer has run his tests to various points and our master socket is definitely good (it was replaced in fact)... router plugs directly into this with a typical 1m cable.
Of note he said that he got worse (though OK) results when our router was plugged in compared to when his special box was which he's justifying the "it's your end mate" argument.

The frustrating thing is I know there's all this service monitoring software that automatically tries to optimise your service... you often see speed jump right up to high 30s then come down to 20s for instance. But it seems when there is an issue it sometimes goes into some sort of 'safe mode' until someone pokes it with a stick (I surmise, could be bollocks in my understanding) which I cannot do.

I have my own router/modem so maybe I'll put the plus.net one back so they can't blame my 'custom' equipment.

They did suggest they might put be on a different cabinet - we're in the valley between two villages and technically we're on the wrong side.

[WTFH]

The engineer claims my home network (wifi, ethernet wiring) could have a fault which is propagating back up the line but this seems off to me. Wiring between the master phone point to my router could obviously cause problems but if the router itself or my CAT6 cabling had issues, surely that can't take the connection down? He also seemed to be saying if you are thrashing the connection maxing out bandwidth, this can cause problems on the line/connection itself. Again, how can packets bouncing around on my ethernet/wifi cause a line fault?

Generally, he's talking rubbish but covering himself.
But...
How are you connected between the master and the router? Do you have a filter plugged in, or is it one of those master sockets that has a built in splitter/filter?
If you've got a filter and it's more that a few years old, swap it out for a newer one (if you're like me, you'll have several of them lying around, unused)
Apart from that, do you have any other phones/sky box/etc plugged in around the house without a filter?

The other thing to do, although it's a bit of a pain... the next time you spot it dropping, go for a drive and see if Openreach are at the cabinet. It's an amazing coincidence how someone's internet goes down the same day that they are at the cabinet fixing someone else's issue. I say "coincidence", because in recent studies, 100% of the time an engineer is at the cabinet, at least 1 house that was working will experience issues.