Continuously log internet connectivity.

[mycarsavw]

I have a friend, we'll call her Jane, who is working in a remote office on the end of a poor VPN - poor in terms of speeds, connectivity and support.

Only Jane uses the connection continuously during working hours, the other remote workers aren't as reliant on IT. Jane needs access to remote databases, network shares and obviously all services provided by the server (DNS, AD, etc), so when the VPN falls over, nothing works.

All workstations are locked down, she is a local user and so nothing can be installed. All wireless connections go through an AP on the back of the VPN and there is a strict no-BYOD policy.

These issues have been reported at all levels, but nothing appears to be done. It seems it's an issue outside of IT's skillset. What she'd like to be able to do is monitor the connection from 9 to 5:30 every day for a week and then present a graph of drops, slow downs and so on. Mainly to prove it is a problem that needs fixing.

A combination of smokeping, uptimerobot and thinkbroadband's monitor. Does such a program exist?

Thank you

[mycarsavw]

A crafty moderator removed the above post, now I look like I'm insane

Welcome to HEXUS

Did you read any of my post at all?

[Dashers]

She's a user? I can't imagine there's a lot she can do without administrative rights.

She can potentially monitor her bandwidth utilisation with perfmon, but this is unlikely to show anything if it's other users that seem to be the cause.

You need to have something inline to the upstream connection, e.g. the router itself.

You can't test bandwidth continually as you'd flood the connection which would in itself cause problems. Running a continual ping will give you hints to packet loss. But this sort of thing really needs to be monitored at the switch level.

[mycarsavw]

She's been running thinkbroadband's analyser for a week now, and packet loss is all we can see.

I've come to the same conclusion as you, it needs device/admin intervention.

Oh well, it was worth a punt.