Let’s be honest: not one of us loves our internet service provider (ISP). I wish it weren’t so, but ISPs have some of the worst reputations in the entire tech industry.
But my own situation wasn’t just an occasional annoyance. Increasingly, my home internet was growing virtually unusable, with my connection dropping off up to 50 times a day. You heard that right — 50 times. All the while, I was stuck in a contract with an ISP that was constantly brushing me off.
Feeling pretty powerless, I eventually did some research and stumbled upon a shockingly simple tool that helped me prove that I was the victim here, not the problem.
The worst connection I’ve ever had
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
Allow me to loop you in on my sorry tale of fighting my internet connection — or should I say, my internet provider.
I work from home and I’m a huge gamer. Both of those things make having a stable internet connection a necessity. It all started a few months ago with the occasional disconnect here and there. My internet would randomly go down, often at odd hours of the night, for a few minutes at a time. It happens, I thought, chalking it up to maintenance. Little did I know, things were about to get a lot worse.
The odd disconnects became a daily occurrence. I’d lose connection on every device in the house for anywhere between 2 and 30 minutes, and this happened a few times a day at first, and then with increasing frequency. It got to the point where my mobile internet — as in, plugging in my phone and using a 5G connection on my PC — worked better than the fiber that was supposed to be fast and stable. My fiber went down dozens of times every single day.
Kunal Khullar / Digital Trends
Before I ever turned to my provider, I tried troubleshooting, but I had a hunch that the problem ran deeper. After all, if it was an issue with my PC, then surely the internet would’ve worked just fine on my phone or my laptop … but it didn’t. Whether Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection, both went down constantly, often at the worst possible time.
When I contacted my ISP, their first idea was to replace my modem, which they did. Then, they changed all the cabling in my apartment. And then, they told me that my internet was working great and everything looked fine on their end. They promised to send a technician over to verify my connection once again, but it never happened, and they essentially ghosted me for weeks. Calling them produced a generic “you have to wait for us to call you” response.
Needless to say, I was frustrated. More than that, I felt pretty powerless. Working was a pain; gaming was impossible. Locked into a two-year contract, I almost resigned myself to the idea of having to pay my (highly incompetent) ISP for something that didn’t even work.
It’s a good thing that I did a Google search first.
An unexpected rescue
Monica J. White / Digital Trends
I felt pretty done with trying to explain to my ISP that, no, my internet doesn’t work fine. A quick sweep through their social media told me that many other people were dealing with the same frustrations as I was, so it all seemed like a lost cause. I needed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the issue wasn’t on my end.
My first thought was to start writing down every disconnection, but even night owls like me go to sleep sometimes. My meticulous notes only scratched the surface of the problem. In addition, there was no easy way for me to prove that the internet was down on my ISP’s end and not in my local area network (LAN). Fortunately, a quick search led me to a tiny tool called Net Uptime Monitor (NUM).
Net Uptime Monitor is a tool made to help users track the reliability and stability of their internet connection. It’s also super simple, so much so that, at first, I felt skeptical as to whether it could do the job. What it does is exactly what it says on the tin — it checks whether your internet is working or not by sending out periodic “pings” to three different servers.
A ping is a small data packet targeted at a server that measures how fast the server responds (and whether it responds at all). Since NUM pings not one, but three servers one after another, even if one server is down, it’ll be able to connect to the other two, thus proving that your internet is working. If all three don’t respond, it indicates total internet failure.
Monica J. White / Digital Trends
NUM’s constant monitoring proved to be pretty amazing for my needs, but it also has one other crucial component — it differentiates between LAN failures and ISP failures. The tool tests the local network first, checking the so-called gateway device (such as a modem or a router) that connects your PC to the connection provided by your ISP. If the gateway responds properly, NUM returns a message: “Local Network is OK.” The second part of the test is what looks into the connection between your local gateway and your ISP, as well as the internet at large.
It was Net Uptime Monitor that finally offered me tangible proof that my LAN was fine. It wasn’t the modem, or the cabling, or my PC. It was, without a doubt, my ISP.
Lightweight as it may be, NUM still has a few interesting settings. You can change how often it sends out pings, and how long a failure needs to be before it’s logged. At this point, as I was collecting receipts to show to my ISP, I chose the lowest possible intervals of two seconds for both of those things. You can also adjust whether you want the tool to play a sound when your internet goes down and reconnects.
Monica J. White / Digital Trends
Speaking of receipts — perhaps the best thing about NUM for people in my situation is the logging feature. The tool logs every single failure in a text file, noting whether the LAN was fine or not, how long the failure lasted, and the exact time it took place. This made all the difference. Instead of showing empty-handed, I had plenty of proof to show my ISP just how bad their service was.
One thing to note here is that Net Uptime Monitor is free, but only technically. It can run for 30 to 60 minutes in the free version, at which point you’ll need to start it up again. As I wanted to monitor my connection around the clock, I chose to pay for a one-time permanent license. It cost me $10, and I consider it money well spent.
This little tool gave me what I needed. I was finally able to present data to my ISP without having to note down every single failure (which, given the frequency, got tedious real quick).
Did it help? Well, yes and no.
A (kind of) happy ending
Web Hosting / Unsplash
With the logs, my provider finally admitted that there was an issue, and it wasn’t just in my apartment — it was in my entire building. Despite this, they were still unable to give me any sort of a solution or a promise as to when they’d fix my connection. It was all the same old same old: “We’ll call you.”
After dozens of calls and a couple of in-person visits, I gave up on my ISP ever fixing my internet. I needed a stable connection, and I wasn’t willing to wait for many more months for it to happen. Instead, I bit the bullet and found a different ISP and I can now finally work and game in peace once again. It’s running beautifully, and my current NUM logs serve to prove that.
Even though I gave up on my provider, the logs from Net Uptime Monitor still came in handy. If not for them, I wouldn’t have been able to break my contract with the old ISP ahead of time, at least not without paying several hundred dollars. Fortunately, since I had solid proof that my internet was downright terrible, I was able to part ways with that ISP at no cost, two years before the contract would have lapsed.
If you ever find yourself in my position, there are many things you can do. You can buy a better modem or router, you can try to troubleshoot your Wi-Fi, you can even just call your ISP directly and get them to come fix it for you — that’s their job. However, if they’re being as difficult as mine was, try out Net Uptime Monitor and come back with receipts. For me, it did the trick.
