Home Wifi Outage Issue + Network Monitoring Software?

[saladcrack]

Hello networking aficionados!

 

I'm looking for a program that I can run on my computer or phone that can track my home network activity, things like devices currently or previously connected, current usage, and whatever else I can't think of right now. Preferably free but I'm not opposed to paying, I just want something that works reliably and is accurate. I'm aware GlassWire has sponsored a few LTT videos and they are my top option right now but any other recommendations would be great, thanks.

 

I'm also looking for some help diagnosing an issue with my home network which is why I'm asking about the activity tracker. I live in the UK and my current ISP is TalkTalk which, unbeknownst to my mother at the time, is downright the worst service provider in the country. The internet to the house goes down 5-7+ times a day even at one or two a.m. for about 2-5 minutes at a time. The interesting part is that it seemingly only happens when me and/or my brother is at home, which is semi-rare as I'm away at university (home for the holidays now) and my brother is away doing an apprenticeship. The outages are incredibly odd because like I mentioned they only seem to occur when I and/or my brother are home despite my father being a heavy internet user, my mother less so but she still likes to regularly watch shows on Netflix or Amazon via a smart TV. My mother and father testify that the outages never occur with just them in the house. No, we have not contacted TalkTalk anytime in the past 6-9 months as we finally realized they are shite and will do anything not to spend money to fix an issue (also a major theme in many complaints online). Dealing with them at the beginning of the contract and with other ISPs we already know many of the questions they may ask or possible reasons they might provide as the cause of our issue. The outages also occur at seemingly random times and during varying network loads, for example, today one occurred while me and my mother were watching a show on Amazon Prime via the smart TV with every computer in the house sleeping or shutdown, mobile devices obviously connected but not in use, another one also occurred while I was "watching" a Twitch stream, watching a YouTube video and playing Warframe online on my Nintendo Switch which imo is not an irregularly heavily load as the network at my uni house handles that with ease (Virgin Media btw). Speed is also an issue as we are not getting the speed we were promised and are paying for but that comes second as I would first like a stable, reliable network.

 

Sorry if this was a ramble but I wanted to get everything out there.

 

Any help would be appreciated, thank you!

[Blu3Jay]

Two words, Glasswire
or Wireshark  

 

Both these options require to you purchase the software, but however are some of the best one's on the market. If you need a free alternative for your phone and desktop, let me know

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, Blu3Jay said:

Two words, glasswire
or wireshark  

 

Both these options require to you purchase the software, but however are some of the best one's on the market. If you need a free alternative for your phone and desktop, let me know

Ummm, wireshark is free

[Blu3Jay]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

Ummm, wireshark is free

well this is awkward..........

[saladcrack]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Ummm, wireshark is free

1 minute ago, Blu3Jay said:

well this is awkward..........

 

Looks like I'll be going with Wireshark although I'd like to explore options for my phone (Android) since my computer isn't on 24/7 and I assume the program would need to be running at all times to capture all network activity.

[Lurick]

Yah, I would personally go with Glasswire if you want easy identification of traffic you're not familiar with. Wireshark is great if you know what you're looking for and can navigate the filters but if you just want a simple solution then going the Glasswire route is going to be the way forward for you.

[saladcrack]

2 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Yah, I would personally go with Glasswire if you want easy identification of traffic you're not familiar with. Wireshark is great if you know what you're looking for and can navigate the filters but if you just want a simple solution then going the Glasswire route is going to be the way forward for you.

Yeah Wireshark already just looks like a jumble of numbers and letters to me 

[aezakmi]

5 minutes ago, Gamessys said:

 

Looks like I'll be going with Wireshark although I'd like to explore options for my phone (Android) since my computer isn't on 24/7 and I assume the program would need to be running at all times to capture all network activity.

most routers have a built-in logging option you can use

[saladcrack]

Just now, aezakmi said:

most routers have a built-in logging option you can use

Possibly but I have no idea how to access that which a little Googling might solve but I'm also not a networking person so a nice visual helps a ton

[Blu3Jay]

1 minute ago, Gamessys said:

Yeah Wireshark already just looks like a jumble of numbers and letters to me 

as @Lurick said, Glasswire is definitely a lot cleaner. Unfortunately there is not many solutions that do it as well as glass wire does, many programs you will run into look very fameliar to wireshark.

[aezakmi]

30 minutes ago, Gamessys said:

mobile devices obviously connected but not in use

if something is connected it's in use, data is being sent and received all the time even if you're not using the device.

 

now it could be due to the router not being able to handle a certain amount of connections at the same time

 

if it goes down only when those mobile devices are hooked up to the network the problem could be one of the devices and not ISP's fault.

34 minutes ago, Gamessys said:

Speed is also an issue as we are not getting the speed we were promised and are paying

ah the classic, I see that happens all around the world and not just in banana republics, u can't do anything about that

 

[saladcrack]

7 minutes ago, aezakmi said:

if something is connected it's in use, data is being sent and received all the time even if you're not using the device.

 

now it could be due to the router not being able to handle a certain amount of connections at the same time

 

if it goes down only when those mobile devices are hooked up to the network the problem could be one of the devices and not ISP's fault.

ah the classic, I see that happens all around the world and not just in banana republics, u can't do anything about that

 

Is there anyway to find out which device might be the problem? I concede that there might be too many devices for the router to handle but would that really cause it to completely shutdown and reset? I thought it would just slow way down. I assume upgrading the router would solve this issue? My other sticking point is that the amount of devices connected doesn't change once I'm here, the router handles all the devices for hours on end and then just decides to shutdown at random points throughout the day? It doesn't seem like the load from the devices actually affects the router or network, it really seems to be random.

[aezakmi]

7 minutes ago, Gamessys said:

Is there anyway to find out which device might be the problem? I concede that there might be too many devices for the router to handle but would that really cause it to completely shutdown and reset? I thought it would just slow way down. I assume upgrading the router would solve this issue? My other sticking point is that the amount of devices connected doesn't change once I'm here, the router handles all the devices for hours on end and then just decides to shutdown at random points throughout the day? It doesn't seem like the load from the devices actually affects the router or network, it really seems to be random.

I remember going to a client's house (I work at a pc store) and she had the same problem with a smartphone, whenever it was connected to the local network connection to the other devices would be lost for a few seconds, turned out to be a misconfiguration with the wireless network type and security, apparently the phone wasn't fully compatible with the 802.11b network the router had and was making it create a new IP address for the phone, once it filled all of the IPs available the router would refresh the pool and keep only the addresses in use causing the connection to go down for a while.

My solution for that case was to configure the network in 802.11g mode and then assign a static IP address for every device.

You don't always have to replace the router, btw I think the UK uses 802.11n/ac wireless because of the internet speeds, we only have b-rated routers with fast eth (10mbps) from ISPs since no connection can still top that speed and must be really cheap to get this kind of old crap from China, had to replace mine because fast ethernet was painfully slow to use to transfer files between computers on my home network.

 

Also check the power cable