Looking for a way to monitor my internet connection on my router

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I have 6 computers all running Windows 7 Pro in a peer-to-peer network. I do not have a server.
I searched using the works “internet monitor” but did not find any applicable posts.

My internet connection is provided by a big phone company. Sometimes it runs poorly. I’d like to find some sort of software which could monitor my internet connection and, when it is not running properly, tell me in some way so I can take action.

Right now the only thing I can do is to connect a laptop directly to my internet router and have it run ping all the time. Then I have to open a remote desktop connection to the laptop so I can view how well it is running ping. There must be a better way.

What simple and inexpensive software is available to monitor my internet connection so I don’t have to connect a laptop to my router and keep typing “ping http://www.yahoo.com” all the time?

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Mark L Olson

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Why don’t you just test your internet connection with your browser, using openspeedtest.com? (or one of the other web services?)

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cellsee6

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Thank you for the information, I will try this.

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Does the big phone company offer an app for that? Or do you suspect the ISP, and are looking for independent verification?

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I will have to ask the big phone company if they have an app.  Never thought about this so thanks for your suggestion.

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Pinging a remote site doesn’t give you data about throughput, DNS response, path length etc. to do that you need to monitor traffic from your PCs to remote sites and that effectively means replacing your router with a traffic monitor and this is not a cheap option. If you had a spare PC with a couple of network ports and a spare router/switch you could rig something up with smoothwall, m0n0wall, pfSense etc.

cheers, Paul

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Mark L Olson, Ascaris

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cellsee6 wrote:

I’d like to find some sort of software which could monitor my internet connection and, when it is not running properly, tell me in some way so I can take action.

This is of course dependent on what the software should run on. Also there’s more than one way for a net connection to “run poorly” … also should this work when you’re present (meaning in the inside-LAN area), or even when you’re not?

If all you have is the router, well, *some* of them can send reports by email, some few even by SMS. Problem with that is, if the line is down, mail isn’t going out… and a local waiting queue for mail is a lot less common than just sending.

If you do have a constantly-on PC in the inside LAN, you can run monitoring tools on it. On Linux this is easy to do as a background task and make it for example send the reports by email, with a wait queue if the line is down. I don’t offhand know of free tools for Windows to do quite that (except by tweaking the Windows installation until it runs the Linux tools), but foreground graphical applications at least are around for free and background tools can be bought. (If you have a Mac, it can run about the same tools as Linux, but setup might be more difficult.)

Dedicated monitoring appliances do exist too but tend to be sort of expensive.

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cellsee6

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Search for “Network monitoring software”.  There are a number of reviews and lists.

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The firewall software Glasswire Elite will monitor network traffic, for one computer, and provide you with detailed informion.  There is a free version, but it doesn’t show network traffic.  The price for 3 paid versions goes from $39 to $99.

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I use Fing and a Fingbox for what you describe.  It gives you some data with which to argue with your ISP if the speed is off, or the service drops.

Dell E5570 Latitude, Intel Core i5 6440@2.60 GHz, 8.00 GB - Win 10 Pro

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Could you be more specific about the problem(s)?

It can never hurt to power cycle the router.

If speed is your problem, some routers have built in speed tests. Eero and Google Wifi for example. Slowness may be due to lots of traffic that you are not seeing. In fact, the traffic may originate from the router itself, if it got hacked. See what bandwidth monitoring is available in your router.

Check what your DNS servers are here

https://www.routersecurity.org/testdns.php

And, check for new router firmware. If the latest firmware update was over 2 years ago, its probably time for a new router.

 

 

Get up to speed on router security at RouterSecurity.org and Defensive Computing at DefensiveComputingChecklist.com

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cellsee6

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Router firmware update: Thank you for reminding me.  I will check with my provider.

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Unless I am greatly mistaken, if you rent your modem/router/gateway from your ISP, it’s their responsibility; they “push” firmware updates to the devices in question, as far as I understand. Takes a bit of the sting out of the charge every month.

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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I don’t know what country you are in but in the US, I would not assume your ISP is doing anything in terms of bug fixes. Ask them. There may even be different rules for modems compared to gateway devices (combination modem and router).

Get up to speed on router security at RouterSecurity.org and Defensive Computing at DefensiveComputingChecklist.com

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Michael432 wrote:

I don’t know what country you are in but in the US, I would not assume your ISP is doing anything in terms of bug fixes. Ask them.

I’m in the US, it’s Spectrum, I called them, and yes, they do push firmware and software updates for modems, and router/gateway devices after:

They have fully tested the update and certified that:

1) It is important,

2) It is necessary,

3) It does not adversely impact the network or fellow customers.

Or so they say. They MUST be better than MSFT patches…right? <sigh>

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330 ("The Tank"), Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Newbie
--
"The more kinks you put in the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." -Scotty

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samantha23

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