I have a unifi controller hosted on a cloud providers

[G+_Jason Perry]

I have a unifi controller hosted on a cloud providers. I keep getting notices that the APs at a particular site are disconnected, sometimes a half a dozen times a day. Any suggestions on how to prove conclusively it is the switch.

 

My current plan is to bypass the switch and see if I still get the notices.

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

That's a good place to start. Do you have access to mtr (multi trace route), it might give you a better idea of where the trouble spots are if it's outside the local net.

[G+_Jason Perry]

I was thinking of doing to do a trace route but figured I would only notice the issue if my packets don't make it to the ISPs all in one gateway. I won't see the switches IP right?

[G+_Jared Twomey]

Is it a unifi switch?

[G+_Jason Perry]

Jared Twomey that's what I want to put in. I don't know if I will get to. Proving it is the switch and not the internet connection will help my cause. The internet connection is a DSL connection that they get for free.

 

The switch that is there presently there is a 48 port Linksys switch that was donated to them. At present it would be a stretch for them to fill half of it.

[G+_Jared Twomey]

Does the site have a static IP you can ping on the router? Is so you could install something like prtg to monitor and graph the internet service.

[G+_Jason Perry]

To give you an idea of the frequency of the alerts I am getting

 

over the last week

Mo - 5

Tu - 3

We - 0

Th - 2

Fr - 0

Sa - 2

Su - 4

 

I am typing this thinking maybe the number is related to the buildings occupancy. Hmmm

[G+_Jason Perry]

Jared Twomey I don't believe they have a static IP but I am basing that on the consumer hardware they have as their gateway and that is Stu..... Nope just remembered they were using dyndns for awhile. I almost want to stick a Pi on their network and just leave a trace route running for a while.

[G+_Ben Reese]

I believe you can SSH into Ubiquiti APs. Can you run a script there that pings constantly? Even if you just left the SSH screen open for a few hours on Monday you might get some useful data.

[G+_Jared Twomey]

If you are able to drop a Pi on the network, you could use something like Smokeping (monitors/graphs/alerts network latency and packet loss) to monitor specific devices on the network, and out to the internet. I like Smokeping because it just takes editing a couple of text files to set up, it builds nice graphs for you, and it works as advertised.

 

https://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/index.en.html

[G+_Jason Perry]

Jared Twomey Thanks I am going to have to look at that

[G+_Daniel Stagner]

I am not sure if python will run on Ubiquiti APs. But if so you can make a python script and cron job to upload you IP address to google docs every hour or so. I do this on the raspi I run my personal VPN from. It means that if my ip changes the google doc will be updated with my new IP address.

 

Check out this to setup the upload at

 

https://thepi.io/how-to-use-your-raspberry-pi-to-monitor-broadband-speed/

 

and replace his code his python script with this code to return the IP address instead of internet speed.

 

-code-

import os

import re

import subprocess

import time

 

response = subprocess.Popen('host myip.opendns.com resolver1.opendns.com', shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE).stdout.read()

 

myip = re.findall('myip.opendns.com has address\s(.*?)\s', response, re.MULTILINE)

 

myip[0] = myip[0].replace(',', '.')

 

try:

if os.stat('/home/pi/myip/myip.csv').st_size == 0:

print 'Date,Time,MyIP'

except:

pass

 

print '{},{},{}'.format(time.strftime('%m/%d/%y'), time.strftime('%H:%M'), myip[0])

-code-

[G+_Jason Marsh]

Don't forget the logs on the modem/gateway. Sometimes you'll find interesting bits of info in there. Chances are you'll have to enable logs, as they tend to be off by default on consumer-grade equipment. Sometimes you may even have to setup a syslog server on the network to capture the logs.

 

+1 for PRTG! I used that a few years ago to record how poorly my internet was performing and how often it was down. It's terrible that I had to shame my ISP into repairs, but...