The net connection here was getting pretty flaky. Down for chunks of time in the night, day and in between.
Since our connection’s gears are hidden beneath a couple layers of organizations, it’s been frustrating to deal with the outages. It feels like Qwest / Century Link’s problem – the telling from the second hand says they say that there is only 1 wire-pair in to the house, so they probably are not wholly on top of things. But who knows?
So I wrote a little script to ping every 10 seconds an address randomly chosen from:
- the outside gateway
- the Speakeasy/Megapath DNS server
- Google’s DNS server
The script prints the exit value from the “ping” program (1 is bad) and the duration the pinging has been bad when a good ping follows any bad one.
Here is a day of activity:
1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 00:02:11 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 00:02:33 2011 00:00:22 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 00:30:48 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 00:30:59 2011 00:00:11 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 00:31:11 2011 0 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 00:31:44 2011 00:00:32 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 01:27:28 2011 0 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 01:27:39 2011 00:00:10 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 01:27:51 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 01:28:02 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 01:32:49 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 01:32:59 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 02:03:45 2011 0 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 02:04:39 2011 00:00:54 1 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 02:14:32 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 02:14:42 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 02:21:29 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 02:21:50 2011 00:00:21 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 02:33:26 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 02:33:36 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 02:45:24 2011 0 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 02:45:34 2011 00:00:10 1 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 02:57:01 2011 0 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 02:57:23 2011 00:00:21 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 03:28:36 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 03:29:09 2011 00:00:32 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 03:32:55 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 03:33:06 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 04:27:07 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 04:27:28 2011 00:00:21 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 04:32:22 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 04:32:43 2011 00:00:21 1 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 04:44:21 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 04:44:31 2011 00:00:10 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 04:56:09 2011 0 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 04:56:19 2011 00:00:10 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 05:19:54 2011 0 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 05:20:04 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 05:31:40 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 05:32:01 2011 00:00:21 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 06:18:38 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 06:19:11 2011 00:00:32 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 06:19:23 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 06:19:34 2011 00:00:10 1 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 06:19:46 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 06:19:56 2011 00:00:10 1 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 06:54:21 2011 0 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 06:54:32 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 06:56:35 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 06:56:46 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 07:17:56 2011 0 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 07:18:06 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 07:53:16 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 07:53:26 2011 00:00:10 1 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 07:53:38 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 07:53:48 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 08:16:52 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 08:17:02 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 08:40:22 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 08:40:44 2011 00:00:21 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 09:54:46 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 09:54:57 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 09:56:30 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 09:56:52 2011 00:00:21 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 11:54:25 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 11:54:46 2011 00:00:21 1 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 11:56:32 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 11:57:15 2011 00:00:43 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 12:05:20 2011 0 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 12:05:41 2011 00:00:21 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 12:40:48 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 12:40:58 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 12:52:24 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 12:52:35 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 12:57:20 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 12:57:41 2011 00:00:21 1 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 14:23:30 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 14:24:02 2011 00:00:32 1 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 19:32:21 2011 0 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 19:32:32 2011 00:00:10 1 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 21:39:20 2011 0 66.93.87.2 Sat Oct 22 21:39:30 2011 00:00:10 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 21:53:51 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 21:54:13 2011 00:00:21 1 8.8.8.8 Sat Oct 22 21:54:36 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 21:54:57 2011 00:00:21 1 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 23:12:39 2011 0 72.1.134.1 Sat Oct 22 23:12:49 2011 00:00:10
Analysis of more data shows that, indeed, the gateway is more reliably pinged than the Speakeasy/Megapath DNS server, which is slightly more reliable than the Google DNS server. So, it’s the wire.
Meanwhile, the net connection currently is faster than it’s ever been. Almost a meg, down and a half meg up. Whooo, hoo.