How do I log cable modem down time?

11/8/2002 | Ransom Jones

[RansomJ1]

My internet cable modem company, Millennium Digital, has had its ups/downs lately. My wife says it is down during the day a lot. I don't have to pay for down time if I report it. It would be nice to have a simple system tray program that monitors/logs the cable Internet down time so I can request a refund if it gets unreasonable. Does anyone know of such a program? It would be nice if it was designed to just do the above.

[JackOfVA]

Do a search for Ping Plotter. You should be able to find a freeware version. Set it up to run 24/7 and you will get a daily graph of response time and outages. I track access to the first cable point, the last point in the cable system and my destination point.

I use the Ping Plotter found at www.pingplotter.com


Jack

[evolved_rage]

check out www.broadbandreports.com akak www.dslreports.com.

I beleive they have services for this kind of thing. (fee??? probably)

[Dark Seraph]

Register an account at www.broadbandreports.com and buy some tool points. They have a program you can set up that will routinely ping your connection to give you an idea of how responsive it is, with graphs of up and downtime over various periods of time.

[goldylight]

you can try a ping program that keeps a log so you can tell what times it goes out. you can try pingplotter, but i am not sure if it keeps a log.

[Ramius]

There's a nice app called "Servers Alive" that should do that for you. Has paging notification too. I think it is freeware.

[Ramius]

Correction. Servers Alive is free for monitoring up to 10 hosts (which should work well for you). Just set it up to monitor a host like your given DNS server and it will track up/down events. It's a good app.

[Musketeer]

Demand that your internet cable service provider send a competent technician to fix the problem.

[RansomJ1]

Thanks for the help!...Greate Forum...I got 8 responses in 10 minutes...I've downloaded the products and will test them this weekend...

[Rightly Biased]

I work for a cable co. Here is my advice...

Call your Cable Co. and demand that they send out a competent technician to fix the problem. The Cable Co. has ping plotter and the like to moniter find and fix the problem.If you have called and the problem is still unresolved call back and demand a management response until the problem is repaired.You pay too much a month for cable modem service,and the Cable Co. advertises an always on connection.Hold them to it!!

(we only get shoddy service and produts because we don't demand better.)

I have seen this work too many times in cable industry. Don't do thier job for them tell them if you do you can bill them for your time.

Regards
RB

[airedale]

Go to DSL Reports http://www.dslreports.com and then in the left hand side of the page you'll see something labeled tools. When you get to that page you'll see something called 24X7 monitoring. That's what you need. After a few days you can look at your test history and see how your doing. At the end of each week you get a test report.

In order to use that tool you need to purchase tool points. I buy $25 in tool points and it last me a year. Most of the tools are free. The tool points allow you to purchase priority in using the tools. You go to the head of the line. You also can run a more through security tests.

[dwollmann]

For what it's worth, try pointing your browser at http://192.168.100.1/. Many cable modems have an embedded httpd that will spit out nicely-formatted reports including IP addresses, connection quality, and most importantly a log of recent activity.

There's also a neat little java application for accessing the modem via SNMP, but most cable providers have locked down SNMP access due to recent abuses by customers.