Log internet connection

[Oceanwatcher]

First of all - thank you for doing this firmware. Donation will be coming!

I have a problem I am thinking should be possible to figure out.

RT-AC66U
380.66
PPPoE
Optical fiber

My connection is dropping a bit. And I would love to find a way to log this. And every time it is dropping, I get this nice page from my router showing it is waiting for the connection

Does this get written to a log somewhere? So I could download the log and filter out all diconnect/connect or down/up messages?

It would be fantastic to have such a log as this would be real ammunition towards my ISP. They are not the easiest people to talk to - you need some kind of proof.

BTW - this is not a bug in the firmware. I can see on my fiber-adapter that the connection is really down.

 

[Oceanwatcher]

I have been going through the log a bit - it is very long

Then had the idea to copy everything and paste it into Notepad++

I especially noticed two lines:

May 22 14:37:05 WAN Connection: Fail to connect with some issues.
May 22 14:41:46 WAN Connection: WAN was restored.

Am I right in assuming the first one is the start of the drop and the second one is when the internet came up again?

 

[Fitz Mutch]

I think you could write a script to filter on "WAN Connection", every hour or so. Then capture and hold these log entries in USB storage. Import to a spreadsheet, to remove the duplicates. It's proof.

 

[jeff3820]

What type of computer are you using? The reason I ask is that when I was having issues with my ISP, internet going down for 1-2 minutes randomly all day long...enough to drop calls and interrupt Skype sessions), my son who is a software developer wrote a simple program that runs in the Windows tray and logs when internet connection drops and when it is re-established. It runs under .Net so runs under Windows only. I use it daily on my windows machine.

BTW, the ISP was never able to resolve the issue and I have to change providers but the tool pointed out the issue perfectly...they could only look at a log that is updated every 4 hours...the program updates once a minute.

 

[chevyman142000]

Check out dslreports.com. They have some tools to do Internet connection monitoring. The only requirement is that you enable ping on your WAN connection. I use this and I can see a nice graph of ping times from 2 different physical locations. They also have some other tools like smokeping. Hope this helps!

 

[MarCoMLXXV]

I use Uptime Robot to get notified when my connection goes down and is restored: https://uptimerobot.com/ You'll need an open port, in my case I use ssh for this purpose on a non-standard port, with password authentication disable, only the use of a key is allowed. The port is only accessible externally for the IP-address used by Uptime Robot which I whitelisted. The free version checks every 5 minutes.

I also use Papertrailapp (https://papertrailapp.com) for remote logging, which has some nice filtering features and can even alert you when a predefined search query is found. You can use the remote logging functionality built in AsusWRT-Merlin, even though it doesn't except hostnames, just use nslookup to find out which IP is being used to send your logs too and the port they reserve for your system log. Works like a charm.

Both services are free for home usage and able to produce a report-like output you can use to confront your ISP. Hope this helps. If you need help to set things up, just let me know.

 

[chevyman142000]

I use Uptime Robot to get notified when my connection goes down and is restored: https://uptimerobot.com/ You'll need an open port, in my case I use ssh for this purpose on a non-standard port, with password authentication disable, only the use of a key is allowed. The port is only accessible externally for the IP-address used by Uptime Robot which I whitelisted. The free version checks every 5 minutes.

I also use Papertrailapp (https://papertrailapp.com) for remote logging, which has some nice filtering features and can even alert you when a predefined search query is found. You can use the remote logging functionality built in AsusWRT-Merlin, even though it doesn't except hostnames, just use nslookup to find out which IP is being used to send your logs too and the port they reserve for your system log. Works like a charm.

Both services are free for home usage and able to produce a report-like output you can use to confront your ISP. Hope this helps. If you need help to set things up, just let me know.

Can you give a quick rundown on how you setup the papertrail logging? I set the remote location and port, but no logs seem to be showing up.

 

[MarCoMLXXV]

For the easiest way to setup Papertrail you'll only need your WAN IP and the IP of the remote logserver. This method will work when you have a (nearly) static IP from your ISP. If not, use a DDNS-service (like ASUS or another one of your choice).

Not sure what you've already done, you might consider starting over by deleting the system you've created. Next, choose: Add system on the main Dashboard. The following screen will appear:

With the easiest setup, we won't need the port number. Copy the hostname as we need it in a minute. Select 'Not shown here' and click 'My syslog daemon only sends to port 514 at the bottom' of the page. AsusWRT-Merlin doesn't by default offer a field to define a port number, only an IP for a remote logserver, so we need to resolve it first:

Use

nslookup logs*.papertrailapp.com

(replace the * with the number showing at your screen)

without the port number (which is private, it's reserved for your account), in a terminal, regardless whether your logged in with telnet, ssh on your router or using a command prompt on windows or a terminal on a Linux system or an online nslookup service. The output shows the IP-address of the server you will be logging to. Now copy and paste the IP in the Remote Log Server field as shown in the screenshot above, which can be found at http://router.asus.com/Advanced_System_Content.asp. If you have HTTPS Only for access to the WebUI enabled, go to at https://router.asus.com:8443/Advanced_System_Content.asp. Press Apply at the bottom of the screen.

Now switch back to Papertrailapp.com to finish your setup.

Assuming you have a (nearly) static IP choose option A. Fill in your WAN IP, Papertrail will use it to identify the origin of the logfiles. If you're not sure what it is, look at the overview page of AsusWRT Merlin or just go to http://myip.dnsomatic.com/, it will return your WAN IP. Copy and paste it in the field outlined above.
Choose a name to associate the logs with your system. I prefer a a short name, as it 's shown on every logline in Papertrail, but it's entirely up to you. Now hit Save. You're done and your logs should appear within seconds, assuming there's something to log

If there's anything unclear (it's still early here) or your situation is different, let me know.

 

[chevyman142000]

For the easiest way to setup Papertrail you'll only need your WAN IP and the IP of the remote logserver. This method will work when you have a (nearly) static IP from your ISP. If not, use a DDNS-service (like ASUS or another one of your choice).

Not sure what you've already done, you might consider starting over by deleting the system you've created. Next, choose: Add system on the main Dashboard. The following screen will appear:

With the easiest setup, we won't need the port number. Copy the hostname as we need it in a minute. Select 'Not shown here' and click 'My syslog daemon only sends to port 514 at the bottom' of the page. AsusWRT-Merlin doesn't by default offer a field to define a port number, only an IP for a remote logserver, so we need to resolve it first:

Use

nslookup logs*.papertrailapp.com

(replace the * with the number showing at your screen)

without the port number (which is private, it's reserved for your account), in a terminal, regardless whether your logged in with telnet, ssh on your router or using a command prompt on windows or a terminal on a Linux system or an online nslookup service. The output shows the IP-address of the server you will be logging to. Now copy and paste the IP in the Remote Log Server field as shown in the screenshot above, which can be found at http://router.asus.com/Advanced_System_Content.asp. If you have HTTPS Only for access to the WebUI enabled, go to at https://router.asus.com:8443/Advanced_System_Content.asp. Press Apply at the bottom of the screen.

Now switch back to Papertrailapp.com to finish your setup.

Assuming you have a (nearly) static IP choose option A. Fill in your WAN IP, Papertrail will use it to identify the origin of the logfiles. If you're not sure what it is, look at the overview page of AsusWRT Merlin or just go to http://myip.dnsomatic.com/, it will return your WAN IP. Copy and paste it in the field outlined above.
Choose a name to associate the logs with your system. I prefer a a short name, as it 's shown on every logline in Papertrail, but it's entirely up to you. Now hit Save. You're done and your logs should appear within seconds, assuming there's something to log

If there's anything unclear (it's still early here) or your situation is different, let me know.

Thank you, this worked perfectly. I was trying to do it without using the port 514 setup.

 

[henry8866]

This is an old thread but I have a similar needs, to monitor home internet connectivity.

Router: TM-AC1900 flashed with asus-merlin 380.64.

I have dynamic dns setup using noip.me, so I can connect to web interface using url http://xxxxx.noip.me:port/
If I setup a uptimerobot to monitor this page every 5 minutes, is this a good practice? will this add additional load to router?

The purpose is to monitor home internet connectivity, I think checking every 5 minutes is sufficient for my case, or I can upgrade uptimerobot so I get every 1 minute ping.

Any other good ways?

Thanks.