Network monitoring

[Gilly]

I've been having some issues with dropped connectivity recently, but have been unable to pin down times and events.

Is there a (preferably small and free) program I can use that will allow me to run it over a 24 hour period, that will tell me what the throughput, rate and packet loss is over that period?

I'd like a breakdown to hourly what the average time was, what the usage was and the amount of packets lost (if any).

Ideas? If there is another way to do it I am all ears.

 

[wij]

If you have a static IP then you might want to take a look at this:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping

It's run off the same hardware that Andrews & Arnold use to monitor their customer lines and is pretty damn good.

As for monitoring things from your end - Cacti + SmokePing are two pretty decent tools if you have some spare hardware and your router can be monitored via SNMP.

 

[SMN]

not sure how easy it is for you, but something like a ntop box doing pass through just before the router could help.

 

[$c8t@]

PRTG Network Monitor by Paessler?

 

[bigredshark]

the free single host version of pingdom (pingdom.com)? No software to install, web based, nice reporting engine giving downtime stats and response times, iphone app, did I mention it's free?

 

[Sp00n]

Gillian, when you say "dropped connectivity", do you mean wired? wireless? adsl? exactly what is dropping ?