Network monitoring tools

[furball]

Anybody happen to know of a piece of software that I can use to monitor the status of a broadband connection over a period of time?

Ours disconnects itself every day and I want to see if it's happening at a particular time of day or after a particular period of inactivity. I know it's something at the other end cos the line itself is still up but we have to reboot the router to get a connection back and it still did it with a new router.

[Krusher]

It could still be the line itself mate, if there is an earth contact or water damaged cable somewhere it can drop out whilst the line still
works for voice calls....

[crackpotterpig]

I had a similar issue while using virgin broadband,the phone then started playing up and a really loud noise on the line,turned out it was the connection in the exchange box in the street.The engineeer told me there was water ingress in the line replaced the part and its been fine since.

[james'll fix it]

most routers have a log built in, that should tell you when connection lost.
might be worth plugging the router to the master socket, with all extensions un-connected by removing the front plate of the socket. just to prove its not an internal wiring fault.

[BadBoy]

Speak to your supplier and tell them there is a fault and you want it investagted. Ensure that they are aware they need to monitor the line over a period of say a week. Also point out that you are not happy, and would expect some kind of compensation of reduced costs until the problem is resolved.
When they eventually get open reach to work on it, don't take open reach's first offer of it's fixed. Make sure the call is left open for a minimum of 28 days as you can bet your bottom doller the problem will come back if you say everything is fine.
Obvioulsly I've not had any problems recently.

[furball]

It could be a line fault, but the problem started when Talk Talk took over Tiscali. We never had any problems before that so I suspect it's a problem with the line profile. If it was a physical fault I would expect it to be more random.

Talk Talk have a forum that I have pointed my Dad at (it's his line) where I found other people with a similar problem which turned out to be a setting on the profile that needed changing. I'm just trying to eliminate all the possibilities they are likely to suggest before they suggest them. Currently it's plugged into the master socket on it's own as it's a dedicated broadband line that my Dad used for work before he retired.

Annoyingly I have access to test equipment that could probably check the line through work but it's waiting to be recalibrated.

[furball]

Reet, having failed to find anything at all out there that does the job I have written a batch file containing the following...

DATE /T >> C:\linetest\logFile.txt
TIME /T >> C:\linetest\logFile.txt
PING http://www.google.co.uk >> C:\linetest\logFile.txt

I have scheduled a task to run every 5 minutes from 03:00 that should hopefully stop at 04:30 (failing that after 12 hours) that runs the batch file. This should tell me if it's shutting down at the same time every day

[PaulHooligan]

Sorry but you answered this question as soon as you mentioned "Talk Talk"

[furball]

Sorry but you answered this question as soon as you mentioned "Talk Talk"

Yeah, tell me about it

Never had any problems until they took over