I have recently noticed some highly-intermittent difficulties with my network and/or internet at home. It started with certain wifi devices losing the connection at random times. These were primarily older or "cheaper" devices, so I wrote it off to low quality or age in the devices. I have seen it happen in some of my newer devices now, and I'm wondering if they just have better recovery ability so when the connection goes wonky they don't actually drop. I have also started noticing issues with my wired desktop, for example while remoting into it it will become unresponsive for at least 10-15 seconds.
Is there any way that I can test the consistency of my network, wired and wireless, across a long period of time (say, several hours at least)? Is there any way to do the same testing for my internet connection? I'd like to determine if the issue is within my network (the router or one of the switches) or if it's actually the internet that's dropping. I'm not as concerned with the speed of the connection, just trying to see if there are as many lapses in actual connectivity as there appear to be.
22 Answers
every ping utility has an 'endless' mode. It will keep pinging until you manually stop it.
on linux, this is default unless you specify "-c 4"
example: ping 192.168.1.1 > my_test.txt will ping endlessly until you press ctrl-c. You can review the entire history of results - literally weeks if you let it keep running - in a file.
on windows, use the -t flag.
example: ping -t 192.168.1.1 >> my_test.txt will do the same thing.
I doubt that's your issue. I have a few ten year old devices that do that sometimes. It's not your wifi that's the issue it could most likely be the router is failing. Reset it and you should re-establish your connection. Either that or you have a static IP address. What I'm saying is you don't need to go through so much work to find out about your wifi signal. Access whatever router/modem you have and it should be able to run a diagnostic and/or let you know how strong of a signal you have. Like 2.4 Ghz to 5 Ghz. Set it at 5 for best results. And sometimes when the internet Carrier sends a byte package to the router some devices drop off. It's actually kind of normal. Just reset the router and your devices should autoconnect. If they don't call your carrier.
