I'm dealing with some intermittent internet issues from Shaw/Rogers here in Canada and I'm looking for ways to monitor not just the latency but also any brief outages. Currently, I've set up a ping to my modem's default gateway every 2 seconds and I'm using a Python script to analyze the results and generate graphs. However, I'm curious if there are any other tools or methods out there to track outages and monitor connection quality more effectively? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
4 Answers
I recommend using Smokeping! If you’re on Linux, it’s usually included with your distro. You can set it up to monitor multiple targets: your localhost, your router, and some external services like 8.8.8.8 for Google DNS. This gives you a solid history of outages, which can help you identify if the issue is internal or external. Also, check out the 'mtr' tool—it combines ping and traceroute and is super handy for real-time monitoring if problems occur.
You might also want to consider UptimeRobot or a similar free service. The downside is that it tests from an external source, so it might miss some issues between your local network and the ISP. Just a heads up: relying solely on pinging your gateway can be misleading since the gateway might be up while your internet connection is down elsewhere.
I use Zabbix, but honestly, for simple monitoring like this, there are easier tools out there. If you already have Zabbix set up, it could work well enough for you, but otherwise, it might be more complex than you need.
Have you checked out PingPlotter? It's pretty effective for tracking latency and outages, though I must warn you, it can be a bit pricey! Worth it if you need detailed analytics, though.
I actually made an updated version of Smokeping that offers higher resolution and more flexible setups. I plan to add more probe types too, like TCP/HTTP, so keep an eye out for that!