Network periodically drops for short periods.

[Elehat]

Dunno if this should go in Troubleshooting or Networking. 
 

I have the annoying issue that 5 to 10 times a night my internet drops to the point where I get logged out of any games or continuous connection places. Weirdly it happens mainly late when I'd expect there to be low traffic. Are there any tests I could do to find out what's causing these and if there's anything I can do about it? 

 

I know jack all about networking; I pretty much know that I have powerline, an ISP (sky, UK), and their basic router, and that's it.

I could buy a new router but couldn't use a straight ethernet connection and wifi is possible but painful. Mobo has intel LAN. Also changing ISP would be tough because they give sky tv in a bundle making other ISPs relatively very expensive.    

 

 

[GM_Peka]

22 minutes ago, Elehat said:

Also changing ISP would be tough because they give sky tv in a bundle making other ISPs relatively very expensive.    

 

 

How hard have you looked into changing ISP, just cause I was in the same situation as you with sky, but I just bit the bullet and when with plus.net, so much better now.

 

Although I never had issues with internet dropping.

[Elehat]

 

Just now, Pvt. 8Ball said:

How hard have you looked into changing ISP, just cause I was in the same situation as you with sky, but I just bit the bullet and when with plus.net, so much better now.

 

Although I never had issues with internet dropping.

Not very, I flat share with 3 others so I'd have to get them to agree to it.

 

Do you think it's an ISP issue then?

 

If I could be sure it was then I'd probably look into switching, but my flatmates don't report the same issues as me (though they're far less demanding of it than I am).  

[GM_Peka]

4 hours ago, Elehat said:

 

Not very, I flat share with 3 others so I'd have to get them to agree to it.

 

Do you think it's an ISP issue then?

 

If I could be sure it was then I'd probably look into switching, but my flatmates don't report the same issues as me (though they're far less demanding of it than I am).  

It's hard to say, but I'm not a network pro though.

[Timothy11]

Hi Elehat,

 

I live in Australia so we have different ISPs but when we were with a cheap ISP (Exetel) we had a lot of issues like what you are describing, we even had a solid 4 day outage but the ISP would not admit that they had a problem.

 

So I used Traceroute logging software to see how far I was getting during bad periods, and we always had connection to external servers even when the internet was not working. I showed these logs to our ISP and when they did nothing we changed to a premium ISP (Telstra) and have not had any issues since.

 

I recommend that you do some logging and if the issue is not on  your end change ISP.

[Elehat]

1 hour ago, Timothy11 said:

Hi Elehat,

 

I live in Australia so we have different ISPs but when we were with a cheap ISP (Exetel) we had a lot of issues like what you are describing, we even had a solid 4 day outage but the ISP would not admit that they had a problem.

 

So I used Traceroute logging software to see how far I was getting during bad periods, and we always had connection to external servers even when the internet was not working. I showed these logs to our ISP and when they did nothing we changed to a premium ISP (Telstra) and have not had any issues since.

 

I recommend that you do some logging and if the issue is not on  your end change ISP.

Thanks for this, I'll give traceroute a go. Any software recommendations for network noobs like me who need it easy to understand and use?