[afnog] monitoring my ISP

[Brian Candler]

On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 09:16:33AM -1000, Scott Weeks wrote:
> Thing to measure          tool to use
> 
> RTT (pings)                smokeping
+ packet loss (pings)        smokeping

It's worthwhile sending 1500-byte pings (ping -s 1472), as they are more
sensitive to bit errors, although the pings themselves may start to eat up
chunks of bandwidth.

The other issue is what to ping. I suggest pinging your next hop router
(i.e. the very first hop inside the ISP), some other device on the ISP's own
network (e.g. their DNS cache), and some device just on the far side of
their international link (identify by using traceroute, and look for a very
large jump in RTT)

You probably should also ping your own router - to prove that the problem is
not actually inside your own network :-)

Regards,

Brian.