Monitor network connectivity issues

Question

having a ton of issues with my new ISP. Does anyone know of an app that sits in the tray and tests connectivity to various websites every ~10 seconds and provides a report on connectivity and perf issues? Thanks!

Answer 1

There’s not an App, but there’s a tool (one of my favorites) that does this exact thing - iPerf3.

Normally, you’d run iPerf3 on two different nodes to evaluate network performance; one as a server and the other as the client, but in your scenario, you need to check performance to the Internet (nodes you don’t control). iPerf has a solution for that too: iPerf Public Servers

For an example of an iPerf in action, see What dowload speeds is the Apple USB Ethernet Adapter capable of?

You can use these public servers to measure/monitor Internet performance. What you’ll need to do is run iPerf periodically (10 seconds may to too short an interval) and at the end of the command append a file redirect to send the output to a file. For example:

iperf3 -c IP <Address/Hostname> >> filename.txt

The >> filename.txt will create a file called “filename.txt” if it doesn’t exist and the double greater than sign will append the output to the file and not overwrite it. Use a single > to overwite the file.

You could use cron (deprecated) or use launchd to run the command periodically. 10 seconds is much to short an interval; maybe every few minutes or so would be better.

The best part about this tool is that it’s free (as in beer). Period. No trial, no lite version with an upgrade to pro, etc.

Answer 2

I don't know of any Mac app. My router [Sophos UTM] tests connectivity constantly & emails if there is any line fault, but the simplest structure I know is ThinkBroadband, who have a line tester which you can set up to ping your router continuously & check for down-time.

It's a UK site, but I don't think it's geo-fenced, I think it works from anywhere. You need to register & you need to make sure your IP address isn't constantly changing, or it will lose track.

Answer 3

Have a look at https://www.pingplotter.com.

I tried it recently to investigate some Wi-Fi issues I'm having, and I was pleasantly surprised. I thought the display was well thought out, and the documentation quite good.

If you are experiencing intermittent packet loss, it could be quite a useful tool.

It can test connectivity to a website (I think multiple at once if you pay for it, or use the free trial). Every 10 seconds is an option (ranges from every 1 second to every 60 minutes).

The free version shows the last 10 minutes of history. The paid ones show a lot more.

So if what you need are ping results over a period of time, this could be a good option. But this won't measure "performance".

(I'm not connected with them in any way, just had a fairly good recent experience with it.)