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    Monitoring ISP uptime

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • occamsrazorO
      occamsrazor
      last edited by

      Hi,

      I have my pfSense on a Qotom unit setup as follows:

      ISP > fiber > ISP modem > Ethernet > Qotom/pfSense

      I then have…..

      System > Routing > Gateways > Edit > Monitoring IP set to ping Google DNS 8.8.8.8 with probe interval 1 second.

      All of this works fine and correctly shows me when the ISP line is down etc.

      But I would like to be able to see some kind of graph or other information showing me how frequently and for how long the line goes down over the last few days. Is there something inbuilt that shows this? Or how else to accomplish?

      Thanks...

      pfSense CE on Qotom Q355G4 8GB RAM/60GB SSD
      Ubiquiti Unifi wired and wireless network, APC UPSs
      Mac OSX and IOS devices, QNAP NAS

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      • johnpozJ
        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
        last edited by

        You pinging google doesn't actually mean your ISP is down… Just means you getting to 8.8.8.8 is down.. Could be reasons outside your isp control, etc.

        Vs monitoring this sort of thing outbound.  I would monitor it inbound, to your wan IP.  I use uptime robot for this - its free.  You get text/email messages when your line is down, etc. You can do up to 50 monitors for free.. With 5 min interval.. If you want better monitoring you can upgrade to pro for a few bucks a month.

        It gives you stats on your uptime, etc.  In the last 30 days mine is bit low - because I had a change of ISPs in that time period.. And was done for hours, and then it took me a bit to update my dns to point to my new IP, etc..

        uptime.png
        uptime.png_thumb

        An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
        If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
        Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
        SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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        • occamsrazorO
          occamsrazor
          last edited by

          @johnpoz:

          You pinging google doesn't actually mean your ISP is down… Just means you getting to 8.8.8.8 is down.. Could be reasons outside your isp control, etc.

          Yes that's a fair point. Although where I live it's much more likely to be the ISP than a route-to-google issue, and happy to accept that factor.

          @johnpoz:

          Vs monitoring this sort of thing outbound.  I would monitor it inbound, to your wan IP.  I use uptime robot for this - its free.  You get text/email messages when your line is down, etc. You can do up to 50 monitors for free.. With 5 min interval.. If you want better monitoring you can upgrade to pro for a few bucks a month.

          Interesting, I hadn't thought of monitoring the inbound - I will definitely give uptime robot a try, thank you. I'd still be interested if there is a way to have the inbuilt monitoring shown as a graph however…..

          pfSense CE on Qotom Q355G4 8GB RAM/60GB SSD
          Ubiquiti Unifi wired and wireless network, APC UPSs
          Mac OSX and IOS devices, QNAP NAS

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          • johnpozJ
            johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
            last edited by

            The quality graph will give you a graph..  Its under status, monitoring - change it to your quality graph for your gateway you want to look at.

            Reason you want to monitor from outside for such things.. Hard to get alert from our internal system when the internal systems internet connection is down ;)  There are plenty of FREE such sites to do simple monitoring that you can leverage.. statuscake is another one, etc..

            An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
            If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
            Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
            SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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            • JKnottJ
              JKnott
              last edited by

              @johnpoz:

              You pinging google doesn't actually mean your ISP is down… Just means you getting to 8.8.8.8 is down.. Could be reasons outside your isp control, etc.

              When  was experiencing problems, a few years ago, I wrote a script that pinged my ISPs gateway and logged the failures.  If you can't reach the gateway, you can't reach anywhere else.

              PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
              i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
              UniFi AC-Lite access point

              I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

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              • KOMK
                KOM
                last edited by

                https://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/

                I use this in a VM to monitor our links.

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                • occamsrazorO
                  occamsrazor
                  last edited by

                  @johnpoz:

                  The quality graph will give you a graph..  Its under status, monitoring - change it to your quality graph for your gateway you want to look at.

                  Reason you want to monitor from outside for such things.. Hard to get alert from our internal system when the internal systems internet connection is down ;)  There are plenty of FREE such sites to do simple monitoring that you can leverage.. statuscake is another one, etc..

                  Thanks! While noting what you say about the advantages of inbound monitoring, this is what I was looking for but couldn't find.

                  pfSense CE on Qotom Q355G4 8GB RAM/60GB SSD
                  Ubiquiti Unifi wired and wireless network, APC UPSs
                  Mac OSX and IOS devices, QNAP NAS

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