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Monitoring Internet Connectivty

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While I'm not running my own server, will this program allow me to monitor internet connectivity between my router and ISP? I get a slew of dropped connections every hour that range from 20 seconds to several minutes long, but whenever a technician comes out he tells us everything looks great. I'd like to create a log file of appropriate sensors that would capture and properly characterize what we are experiencing. The technicians keep thinking we're either making it up or are just crazy.

If this is a capability of this extensive and impressive program, what kind of sensors would you recommend I run?

Thank you!

connectivity display prtg sensor-recommendation

Created on Dec 10, 2016 8:48:03 PM



3 Replies

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Hi there,

There are multiple sensors you can use to monitor the connectivity. But important is, to run PRTG in your network. So to monitor the network connectivity, you can use the following sensors:

  • Ping Sensor on a device (in PRTG) with the IP of Google's DNS (8.8.8.8)
  • Cloud Ping Sensor to the public IP address of your router/firewall
  • Common SaaS Sensor - monitor availability of Cloud Services (Office365, Facebook ...) After a month you can create a report of the sensors with any of the available templates and choosing them under "Select Sensors Manually" in the report settings.

Created on Dec 12, 2016 9:14:32 AM by Dariusz Gorka [Paessler Support]



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You will need to set the "Interval" of the PRTG sensors down to 5 seconds if you want any amount of detail.

You might want to have a look at ping plotter also. Its in no means a replacement for PRTG, but it can help diagnose small drops in pings like you are getting. I think it goes up to rates of 10 pings per second, not that you need that resolution in this case.

Set it up (Ping Plotter, or PRTG) to ping something else on your network, your router, your routers default gateway, a DNS server at your ISP, then a bunch of internet IP address like 8.8.8.8.

You will need to prove to the tech that "its not your fault". Remember, you are guilty unless you prove yourself innocent.

Created on Dec 12, 2016 11:27:04 PM



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Hi Andrew,

Thank you for your recommendation. You can also add a new scanning interval (for example 1s) under "Setup > System Administration > Monitoring > Available Intervals". Afterwards you can choose this scanning interval for the ping sensor of your firewall and Google's DNS (8.8.8.8). The default setting for the ping sensor is to send multiple pings (5) with a delay in between of 5ms.

Created on Dec 13, 2016 7:08:03 AM by Dariusz Gorka [Paessler Support]




Disclaimer: The information in the Paessler Knowledge Base comes without warranty of any kind. Use at your own risk. Before applying any instructions please exercise proper system administrator housekeeping. You must make sure that a proper backup of all your data is available.