Cheap device for checking internet connection?

[treezleef]

Hi,
Supposing you have a device in the field that is connected to the household router via an ethernet cable (may also be TP links in the path back to the router) . The devices were all sucessfully connecting to the internet at installation time. Some of the units then suffer disconnection from the internet for whatever reason. So you want to check that the ethernet connection to the device is good.

So you want a cheap little device that will plug into the ethernet cable and send pings back via the router. What form would such a device take? (small and cheap as possible).

So in other words, you would unplug the ethernet cable from the device, and plug it into the “ping” thing instead . This would be to show up cable faults etc…(ie, no pings if cable broken).

The "ping" thing would be sent out to those customers who suffer internet disconnection.

 

[Mikegh]

Not sure but it doesn't seem like the right approach

What exactly is the equipment, you've posted previously on this

 

[PEG]

Hi,are you wanting to check the actual cable,or a device?

There are a variety of cheap,easy to use testers,which connect at either end of your cable,to prescribed terminations,and test characteristics like continuity,or speed/quality of a signal.

 

[Mikegh]

Hi,are you wanting to check the actual cable,or a device?

There are a variety of cheap,easy to use testers,which connect at either end of your cable,to prescribed terminations,and test characteristics like continuity,or speed/quality of a signal.

Hes looking for a device to determine if customer has internet at his equipment

Surely there's a standardized approach to this issue when you sell/hire equipment like this ?

A basic approach is to send a tech out and if issue is network then customer pays a callout fee

 

[DPG]

Is this related to your other posts about the equipment that your company (or the company you work for) installs and is having problems with?

It all seems like a bit of a scatter gun approach, rather than a methodical investigation into what the problems actually are.

I presume some of your customers are getting a bit frustrated?

 

[Mikegh]

The 'tech' option probably not applicable here anyway
That would be more in the commercial world , but they wouldn't be using dodgy networks there anyway for setup

 

[Mikegh]

.

 

[Strima]

Cheapest option, speedtest.net, either via smartphone app over WiFi or wired connection from a laptop. Every mobile phone site I ever tested after a build we used Speedtest.

If you want to go a little more in-depth Wireshark is a good option as it can analyse your network connection over a much longer period of time.

 

[pc1966]

I don't know of any simple options, unfortunately. Usually I would just use my laptop with a known good cable and any of the usual tools such as ping, traceroute, iperf3, etc.

But as @Strima says trying to access speedtest.net from a web browser covers most issues for outgoing data and gives you a good idea of network health.

But there are all sorts of issues that might be the case if you expect an outside connecting coming in to these devices as normally a router would block that unless the unholy mess of UPnP is enabled (or someone has manually set up port-forwarding), and you also need to know the (probably changing) IP address so something like dynamic DNS has to be configured.

 

[Eddy Currents]

I dont know of a simple hardware tool which you can plug in but with a laptop & USB stick you can setup a live USB installation of Kali Linux which is basically a collection of penetration testing tools to test LANs or WLANs which ever way you want

Its a bit of a learning curve if you have never used Linux or command line tools but that will do whatever networking testing you need

 

[pirate]

Can you please tell what type of installation you are using? Asked this before...you said your Customer Service was "swamped". Clearly, you don't want to travel to check the installation, so pesumably you have installers doing this for you? A hard-wired setup will always work better than "extenders". We need to know exactly what you are installing before you can get any real advice.

 

[treezleef]

Thanks, but sorry i cant tell what the equipment is as i would be sacked.
We use a VPN to connect to the equipment.
Its only about 5% of customers who get this problem......often we get them to solve it by simply turning on then off their TP link wireless repeater thingy.

 

[snowhead]

The company selling and then subcontracting the installation of whatever these systems are that require monitoring / data recovery should be employing expert(s) in reliable data transmission NOT asking for solutions / cheap fixes on Internet forums.
It doesn't portray a good image of the company and it won't be long before one of us works out what it is and who it is.

Even if Treezleef has not been asked to trawl the Internet for solutions Treezleef should stop doing it as your potentially risking the companies reputation and you'll probably be sacked anyway.

Untill a reliable solution is found the company should also stop selling and installing whatever it is.

1 in 20 failure is very high.

 

[MJPD29]

Hi,
Supposing you have a device in the field that is connected to the household router via an ethernet cable (may also be TP links in the path back to the router) . The devices were all sucessfully connecting to the internet at installation time. Some of the units then suffer disconnection from the internet for whatever reason. So you want to check that the ethernet connection to the device is good.

So you want a cheap little device that will plug into the ethernet cable and send pings back via the router. What form would such a device take? (small and cheap as possible).

So in other words, you would unplug the ethernet cable from the device, and plug it into the “ping” thing instead . This would be to show up cable faults etc…(ie, no pings if cable broken).

The "ping" thing would be sent out to those customers who suffer internet disconnection.

Sounds like your equipment is rubbish and you don't know what to do about it

 

[UNG]

If the installed equipment is so mission critical then surely it should be hardwired back to the router trying to cheapen an install can only result in poor connectivity as wireless bandwidth is not infinite as families find out when they are video streaming to multiple devices over wifi, throw into the mix a poor upload speed to the ISP and you have comms major problems
The "connected" home is more bandwidth hungry than people realise, viewing CCTV remotely relies on upload speed lost count of the number of times I've heard "I have a 50+ mb/s internet connection and the CCTV video doesn't load to my phone" when you tell them that is download speed and ask what the upload speed is you get an open mouthed customer as the question is lost on them, then you do some tests and find the upload speed is 5 mb/s or less