Internet traffic monitor/logger? (now with vid)

[indecks]

Hey you networking gurus, I need some advice. My internet service (Time Warner) is having some weird intermittent issue where my connection decides to just drop off. 90% of the time, the modem doesn't even realize it, and it doesn't reboot itself. It just chugs along, but what happens is my ping just shoots up into the 15000ms range for anywhere from 5 seconds to 30 seconds. Then *poof* everything is magically fine. It affects Netflix, browsing (all of a sudden i get page not found over and over), remote desktop access (wife works from home) and of course, gaming. It's random, and i've narrowed it down to "none of my personal hardware." I've had 4 modems (even though I told TW that I didn't need a 3rd), apparently they replaced the drop in the house, and they changed the "cable from the pole". Ive had 4 techs out, and when they run a test on the modem, they see that it's been "up for this long" or whatever. When it first happened, they said the modem said it hadn't had any interruption in over 95 days or something like that.

Yet, this problem still happens. The tech guys that come out have a problem reading notes, and always ask me "so what seems to be the trouble?" I dunno there, jack, maybe read the effing notes on the call?

It's just annoying. Anyway, I'm looking for some kind of program that will monitor the traffic on the internet connection, and log any kind of weirdness. Say, if it notices that ping goes above 150ms it logs it. Disconnects, logs it. Modem reboots, logs it. All that type of stuff. Is there any kind of program that does this? I know I can set c:\ping http://www.google.com to go indefinitely, but A. how would I log the results, and B. Google would be pissed if I pinged incessantly for 10 hours a day for several days at a time.

I'm working on a vid to show what it looks like.. It'll be up in a little bit.

EDIT: here's a youtube vid showing what happens. If you pay attention to the bottom area, you'll see the 'signal bars' drop from 4 bars to a red X, signifying a loss of connection.

[skate323k137]

having been a cable guy for a few years, this sounds like a line issue (i.e. the signal outside your house isn't right to begin with). Are you out of town in a subdivision, or in town? Also, to the service guys credit, they NEVER fucking showed us the call notes when I was a tech. It was a major gripe of mine.

You should be able to go to 192.168.100.1 in your browser (that may be where the techs are going). System uptime doesn't necessarily mean it was online the whole time, thats just that it's been booted up, synced to the provider or not. You should have both a downstream and upstream signal level and frequency. The downstream levels should be somewhere roughly between -5 and +10 dBmV, and the upstream between +30 and +50.

Downstream level too high (Above +10) shouldn't be a big deal unless it's REALLY hot (like +20). Downstream levels too low (below -5 or -10) means your house is really far from the street (i.e. really long cable run), your modem is behind more than one splitter (BAD), or your neighborhood is fucked. Talk to your neighbors to see if they have the same issues (if applicable).

Upstream is where most providers have issues. Anything from your modem above +50 dBmV (especially above 55) means your modem has too much interference sending data back to your provider. Most modems aren't even online if they're above the 50 dBmV range upstream. There are either too many splitters, or if you're not a long way from the street (given all the cable is new from the tap (outside) to your modem) the signal is fucked outside. Good luck getting them to send a line tech.

in an extremely rare case, one of your TVs or cable boxes hooked to cable in your house could be throwing back signal ingress. This you can't really track down without a signal meter and service from the outside disconnected.

As far as logging it, I could whip up something in linux, but for windows there are some shareware/freeware programs around if you google hard enough. http://alert-ping.software.informer.com/ might work, or pingdom.com will do it the other way around (monitor you inbound rather than you monitoring outbound). good luck!

[indecks]

Hey thanks for the info. I tried alert ping, but it didn't log anything. All I could get it to do was stop pinging with an alert when it would fail.

I tried pingdom.com but they want to charge a monthly service. I didn't try the free 30 days because they likely want a CC#, which is bunk. I found a ping program called Fping. It can spit out to a log, use time/date stamps as well as all the rest of the standard ping functions. It doens't seem to show the latency rising, it just goes from it's standard 45ms to 'request timed out' whenever it happens.

I'm in a suburb of Austin Texas (Cedar Park) and I'm in a heavily populated area. I haven't checked with my neighbors though. Might do that this evening.

[skate323k137]

Yeah, definitely check with your neighbors. Odds are you're not the only one having this problem, but if you don't all complain, they'll [the cable company will] never admit the issue.

If you can get a screen shot of the cable modem diagnostic page(s) I could look at that for you too if you want.

[wip3outguy7]

LOL, I think it's just Time Warner. I live near Cedar Park and their service out there has always been pretty horrible. We get frequent lag spikes, mostly during peak hours. The lines are pretty old and TWC is in no hurry to upgrade the infrastructure as long as AT&T is dragging its feet about building into the area.

About all you can do is update your router settings and try to divide your network traffic. Things slightly improved when I set up a DMZ and configured my PS3 to use it.

[indecks]

Yeah, definitely check with your neighbors. Odds are you're not the only one having this problem, but if you don't all complain, they'll [the cable company will] never admit the issue.

If you can get a screen shot of the cable modem diagnostic page(s) I could look at that for you too if you want.

Unfortunately, the diag page on the modem only shows basic info. MAC addy, etc. Not even uptime. You have to log in to see signal strength and I don't know the password. I tried to watch the tech when he got in there last time, but I wasn't sharp enough to see what he was typing. I'll see about getting a screenie when he shows up again. Should be today somewhere.

LOL, I think it's just Time Warner. I live near Cedar Park and their service out there has always been pretty horrible. We get frequent lag spikes, mostly during peak hours. The lines are pretty old and TWC is in no hurry to upgrade the infrastructure as long as AT&T is dragging its feet about building into the area.

About all you can do is update your router settings and try to divide your network traffic. Things slightly improved when I set up a DMZ and configured my PS3 to use it.

The thing is man, this only started happening about a month ago. It's happened in the past, once or twice, maybe, but it was totally negligible. But about a month ago I started seeing these lag spikes constantly. Today it's only happened like twice, maybe 3 times. But last Thursday, my wife said she actually lost count as to how many times it happened during her work day.

[wip3outguy7]

LOL, I think it's just Time Warner. I live near Cedar Park and their service out there has always been pretty horrible. We get frequent lag spikes, mostly during peak hours. The lines are pretty old and TWC is in no hurry to upgrade the infrastructure as long as AT&T is dragging its feet about building into the area.

About all you can do is update your router settings and try to divide your network traffic. Things slightly improved when I set up a DMZ and configured my PS3 to use it.

The thing is man, this only started happening about a month ago. It's happened in the past, once or twice, maybe, but it was totally negligible. But about a month ago I started seeing these lag spikes constantly. Today it's only happened like twice, maybe 3 times. But last Thursday, my wife said she actually lost count as to how many times it happened during her work day.

Jeez.

PM sent.

[CRTGAMER]

My internet service (Time Warner) is having some weird intermittent issue where my connection decides to just drop off. I've had 4 modems (even though I told TW that I didn't need a 3rd), apparently they replaced the drop in the house, and they changed the "cable from the pole". Ive had 4 techs out, and when they run a test on the modem, they see that it's been "up for this long" or whatever. When it first happened, they said the modem said it hadn't had any interruption in over 95 days or something like that.

Your Cable Provider is responsible to give you adequate signal to your modem. That said I also had a problem a few years back with my cable. I have five TVs, a telephone modem and a PC modem sucking off the cable feed. The repair tech that came to the house was subcontracted to do the work, not a direct employee. He mentioned the signal was adequate, but too many splits with all the extra TVs connected.

He installed a 15db amp that really helped the signal. I think it was under the table and not really an approved method from the cable provider. A subcontractor's workaround and it worked! On the TVs that did not use a cable box the slight fuzz became crystal clear and the online connection speeded up. The amp is a strange bird mounted before the split off outside the house. Power is supplied with a power brick inside fed back to the same cable connection. I rerouted the cable to become just the power source for a better connection.

I recently picked up a spare at the Swap Meet just in case that amp ever fails. The TV Cable power connection really makes for an easy hookup. If you go this route, have care the signal is not too high which could also lead into problems. Your cable box has a hidden menu that shows the signal. Google to see what the optimal range is for the brand box you have.

More info on the amp, note the cable connection for power:
http://www.antronix.net/Products/mra.php
http://www.antronix.net/uploads/specs/D ... e_59_0.pdf

[skate323k137]

Amps are great if you have more than 5 or 6 devices connected, but you should never amplify the signal to a modem. Ideally, the first spliter should be 2 way split, one output straight to the modem, the other output to the amp, and then the amps output into a splitter for the other 6+ devices.

[indecks]

Thanks for the info everyone (wipeout, gonna try that in a bit, thanks for the PM).

Not sure if I mentioned it before, but we don't actually have anything else from TW in the house other than their modem. We use their digital phone (served from the modem, obvi) but we have our own phones, and we don't use their cable at all. No cable boxes, etc. I'm a Netflix/NaviX/PirateTV kinda guy.

Also, we finally heard from one of the lead techs. They said they had been getting complaints about the same issue from other people, so they sat at one of their poles or nodes, etc and monitored, much like I'd been doing with my ping set up. They realized it was something on the lines end, and not anything with my house/lot/hardware. So it's been escalated to the line guys and they actually had the audacity to tell me there was "no ETA on when it'll be repaired."

Great. Day one when UVerse or FiOS is out here, we're switching. I'll also see about billing giving me some sort of credit for the past month as well as for however long this will be unrepaired.