New
#11
I've read (but cannot verify) that ping traffic is given the lowest priority on a network... so I'm not sure how good of a measure it is for changes that happen for a small amount of time. The router might opt to not respond to pings at all if it thinks that it has better things to do
Even pinging two or three web servers out on the internet can yield results that are hard to correlate with a particular event. But ping times can give you a feel for the norm. And they are great for answering more binary questions:
Am I online?
Am I offline?
If offline, can I reach the router? If yes, then perhaps it is the ISP.
If you want a bit more stable ping times, pick a server that is physically closer to you than Google's or Amazon's. You can do that via tracert. Take note of the IP address for the 3rd or 4th hop. Constantly ping that IP instead of Google.
From a cmd prompt window:
Don't worry about hops that have no ping times...Code:tracert google.com
...but don't use them as IPs to ping either.