Software to monitor my Internet connection?????

[#1]

I have been having intermittent internet problems, where my ping latency goes through the roof and my upload speed drops to virtually nothing.
My last BT Speed test;
Download Speed;  12.40
Upload speed;        0.08
Ping Latency        270.00
At this point I could not load the portal.plus.net web page. A command line ping of plus.net returned an average ping time of 1048ms, a ping of google.co.uk returned 996ms.
So I rang customer services - 25 minutes later when they answered, it was all working again, ping times back to 56ms and I could once again load web pages.
The upshot of the conversation is I now have to prove to PlusNet that the problem is external to my network. ie customer services asked me to plug a computer directly into the openreach modem and monitor the problem, which only occurs intermittently. It has taken me several weeks to capture an event using BT speedchecker, however this is insufficient to prove a line fault as everything was all right by the time a spoke to customer services.
Also plugging a PC direct into the modem means in effect I lose internet to every other device in the house while I monitor the connection for an intermittent fault. Which makes me unhappy.
As it is impractical for me to sit there 24 hours a day trying to capture a problem, can anyone recommend some software to monitor my connection to capture this intermittent issue?
(at the moment I am using a BT openreach fibre modem and a Vigor2830 router)

[#2]

As you are using a DrayTek  Unit this may be of use / interest to you.
http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/accessories/smartmonitor

[#3]

Something uploading whilst you were testing??? what are your "normal" up and down speed

[#4]

No, nothing up loading. The PC doing the testing was plugged into the router and the WiFi was turned off to run the test.
mav:quote

[#5]

Internet once more unusable;
Just run BT speedtest - ping time 0.0, upload speed 0.02 mbps - normally 0.45 mbps
In order to diagnose the problem I have changed routers; removed a Vigor 2830 and fitted a Netgear N150 model WNR1000v3. Fault remains!
I am running a ping logger on 2 PCs both showing same symptoms.
Logger setup to ping Google DNS 8.8.4.4 - www.google.com and www.yahoo.com
On the PC in office ping varies from 40ms to 1259ms with 14 packets lost, average ping time 723 ms - ping timeout set to 1500ms
On the other PC ping range 28 to 1199 ms with 13 packets lost - this PC is plugged directly into the router while the other goes via a powerline adaptor.
Good job I'm not into online gaming!

[#6]

This is the result of logging my connection...

[#7]

Something doesn't stack up
You state that your normal upload speed is 0.45Mb/s but also state that you are on fibre but an upload speed of 0.45 normally means that you are on ADSL

[#8]

I live out in the sticks - BT openreach have taken the money from the government and supplied a fibre connection to the village.
In actual fact what they have done is terminated the fibre  about a kilometre from the village and the rest of the distance is on copper - hence the awful upload speeds and low download speeds which are only just better than ADSL.
And I am one of the lucky ones, only half the village is connected to this cabinet. The other half are on a cabinet so far away that my neighbours can only get ADSL and the best download speed is 1.5mbps

[#9]

Have you run a fault test with PN? That way you will initiate the proper procedure for fault reporting.
What result to you get if you input your phone number here? https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/adsl.htm?s_cid=ws_furls_adslchecker
I imagine you will get something like me!
FTTC Range A (Clean) 10.3 to 5.8 down 1.2 0.8 up --
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 8.6 2.6 down  1.2 0.5 up --
You see I have a very similar set up to you  - out in the countryside and sligthly slower downlaod speed on Fibre at 1 mile from the cabinet at 10.3mb/s . Upload is 1 Mb/s if I am lucky.
If it is simialr then there is not a lot of room for improvement!
You mentioned you have homeplugs. Its common to find they interfere with the broadband connection due to interference introduced via the mains circuit they use. Try removing them to see if the performance improves

[#10]

I rang PN customer services this morning to log the fault.
And looking at the BT broadband checker, it suggest figures I can only  dream of;

FTTC Range A (Clean)    80  to  80 down  20 to 20 up
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 80 to  52.6 down  20 to 15.5 up
I have never had anything like that 17.0 down and 0.7 up are the best I have ever had.
But the fact is it has worked for some years now - only recently have I been getting these very very low up speeds and massively intermittent ping times.
At the minute ping is at 40ms, which is on the high side of normal - it goes as low as 25.

[#11]

If only....

[#12]

Quote from: Cerberos

plugging a PC direct into the modem means in effect I lose internet to every other device in the house while I monitor the connection for an intermittent fault. Which makes me unhappy. As it is impractical for me to sit there 24 hours a day trying to capture a problem, can anyone recommend some software to monitor my connection to capture this intermittent issue?

Rather than a software solution, you could try signing-up for a SamKnows "whitebox", to get a free hardware performance monitoring box which fits between your router and the rest of your home network.  This "whitebox" will collect performance data from your broadband connection 24/7, and presents the statistics as a variety of graphs which are very useful for historical evidence of how your connection is operating at different times.
I've had my "whitebox" for years, and use it to monitor the effects of my frequent performance tweaking of my broadband router, and for monitoring congestion at my local telephone exchange.

[#13]

Quote

Rather than a software solution, you could try signing-up for a SamKnows "whitebox", to get a free hardware performance monitoring box which fits between your router and the rest of your home network.

That's what I have had for the last 3 or 4 years! They are a superb solution.
In fact looking at the  Sam Knows dashboard you can see how much actual conditions vary over time. See pic attcahed
I f you keep plugging away and improving your line then you may get the improvement in connection speed

[#14]

Rather than going down the SamKnows route I have set up a Raspberry Pi to do a similar job.
Now I have to admit I don't know exactly what I have done. I followed the following two guides pretty much verbatim but it is up and running pinging Facebook, google and plusnet every few minutes.
Once I have done some more tweaking I'll post the results I am getting. I have already had a couple of dropouts this morning before I got the RPi up and running. PlusNet have agreed I need an engineers visit which I have yet to book. By then I should have some evidence to show him.
Guides can be found here;
http://raspberryserver.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/measuring-internet-connection-stability.html
http://blog.dical.org/2015/06/step-by-step-guide-to-installing-smokeping-on-ubuntu-14-04-lts/  (I know this says it is for Ubuntu but it got it working by simply following the guide step by step (even if I didn't understand it))

**Edit**
This helped too
https://nsrc.org/workshops/ws-files/2011/sanog17/exercises/exercises-smokeping.html

[#15]

2 and a half hours of monitoring pings to portal.plus.net