Carrier issues validated

We’ve been having service outages with our Commercial- Time Warner/ Spectrum Cable internet service for a few months. We’ve had five different technician visits over this time trying to resolve the same issue. With all of the visits we have replaced every piece of internal house cabling and external drop to the pole tap, and all the modem/ router/ switches. And at a serious cost! The last two visits were by senior technicians and they came with laptops to show us the health history of our account. We had be writing down the times and dates of the outages to help them pinpoint the problem. What we found is their sampling rate time frame is way broader than they were telling us. Meaning we could tell them the service was out for say an hour on this day/time, but they couldn’t see it on their tools dashboard. Looking forward to clearing up the intermittent outages problem. Many thanks!

Pros

Easy of install and use. It wasn’t until we installed Ping Plotter and took screen shots of those subsequent days for QOS proof did they start to get somewhat serious about the problem! Up till then it was a patch it and move on. patch it and move on mentality. Now that we have our own tool, we gain better QOS data.

Cons

Glad to report we did not find any issues with the software.

A simple to use tool that tells you the state of your Internet connections

I got PingPlotter because I was having flaky Internet connections, and I couldn't figure out what the problem was. I could use Email and simple web surfing, but anything more than that was difficult at best and impossible at worst. Windows 10 Ping program wasn't very helpful. I went online looking for a better, free solution, and I saw many recommendations for PingPlotter. PingPlotter comes with a 15 day free trial of the Pro Version, and that turned out to be very helpful. By monitoring multiple targets continuously over several days, I found patterns in my Internet connection that helped me figure out, in consultation with my ISP where the problems were. I am now working towards a resolution of those problems. I highly recommend PingPlotter as a simple-to-use, helpful tool for diagnosing Internet connection problems.

Pros

Easy to download and install. 15 day free trial Easy to use. It's almost intuitive, but where it isn't intuitive, the help files are actually helpful. Provides helpful graphics that show the path my data is taking, how much packet loss is occurring, and where it is occurring. In the Pro version, you can continuously ping and monitor multiple targets for hours.

Cons

The free trial comes to an end. :-( The graphics would sometimes hang up when I was running continuous monitoring for hours, forcing me to reset and restart.

Essential Tool for an ISP

Pros

Trace graph and timeline graph are the fascinating aspects of the tool. The Tool provides ample information to isolate faults in a complex network. Its interface not only allows modification of different parameters but also provides vital real-time information on packet loss, latency and jitter at each node; thereby, it assists the network engineer to pinpoint issues.

Cons

Very difficult for me to comment here. All the features that I use were very useful.

Looking at the Pro version. The tool works very well, but limited in ability for its price.

Visibility of some network issues. I would purchase some licenses immediately if they were 1/5 of the price (which is where I would put a price on this software) however since the seat license is so high, I will look for other solutions.

Pros

Graphical representation of IP traceroutes and ping stats done at the same time. The graphical information is clear and concise, with the ability to scroll through a timeline to some extent. The software cleanly loads in Win10 without crashing.

Cons

Timeline information needs work as it's not intuitive to scroll through specific times/dates. There is no obvious way to look at a time period over 7 days and examine a 3 minute interval in detail for example. Pricewise; I purchased a Fingbox which is a physical device which has a lot more ability than this software although the uses are different I feel the value for money for this software is not good! The price of this software is way over priced for the pro version. There are no bulk purchase discounts at all so no incentive to purchase more than once license at a time. The features the software offers is very small for what you would expect at the price. There are many free tools out there which seem to do the same thing. Ultimately it won't take long for someone to write an equivalent at a sensible price. The trial period for the pro version should be longer. I didn't really get much time to spend on customisation. Take out the weekends and normal busy daily activities and there isn't really much time to spend on the testing it in 14 days.

Ping & Plot Investigations

When the root cause of packet loss on the network cannot be located via manual investigation, Ping Plotter can determine this via longer term monitoring.

Pros

It is sometimes difficult to determine the root cause of degradation within an ISP. With Ping Plotter you can accurately determine where it originates by locating the affected nodes between the network devices.

Cons

Not the most user friendly interface but understandable considering what we are using it for. Graph designs are a bit ugly to look at and sometimes agents do not want to share this with customers.