Which IP to ping TOT

[Konini]

Dumb question I know.....

I'm on TOT and since changing from ADSL to VDSL I'm getting DNS errors, usually once an hour or so, sometimes many an hour and now and then only one or two a day. I'm not sitting in front of my computer all day, I have radio streaming so I know when it's out (I always check when it goes off) but it also happens when I'm just browsing and when the computer is on but sitting idle. Not my computer, it's happening on PC, laptop, tablet and phone all of which are running different version of Windows or Android. Once every 4-6 weeks it goes off and I have to unplug the router to get it back on again. I've been going to do something about it for ages, but it's only a minor inconvenience and I haven't bothered. When it goes off (Resolving Host/Looking Up) it comes back on again usually within a minute or 2, sometimes 3 or 4 minutes but often under a minute.

I had a tech from TOT yesterday (almost 7 weeks and 2 reminders to get here) and of course he came without phoning me and I wasn't around so my technically challenged husband explained the problem as best as he could. Tech said he'd 'reconfigured it' by which I presume he means the router.

Since he came, it has only gone off twice that I know of, coincidentally (? - I think not) at 9.33pm last night and 9.33am this morning, both times for 2 minutes. Twice a day I can handle and don't care about, in hindsight I should have checked if my ip address was the same before and after. Of course it may have gone off during the night, but I wouldn't know. Anyway, I've started a log to record all problems - I'll log my ip address when I start up in the morning then after any cut-outs, but it has been suggested that I try and ping my ISP when it goes down to see if I can get that far. Sounds like a good idea, I've been trying this morning since it went down to ping tot.co.th but I'm getting no response, even now when it's up and running properly again, probably need an actual IP number.

At this stage, I'm not asking for help on the problem itself, as I said twice a day I really don't care about (I'll come back if whatever he did hasn't done the trick) but only need to know which IP address I should be pinging. Also, is there a utility that will automatically ping the DNS server every couple of minutes and give me a log at the end of the day? That sounds like something that should and probably does exist.

Thank you in advance.

EDIT - not sure if being on VDSL will make a difference to who I have to ping.

[innerspace]

Ok, few suggestions.

1st if really dns you may benefit by using something other than tot.

I use Google dns 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 which is much more reliable.

Next, to track your connection get a dynamic dns provider. I use dyn.com who are the standard in most routers but stopped their free plan a while back. Cheep overall though. Free options still exist but either need an always on pc or be lucky with router.

Once you have dynamic dns get something on your network serving any kind of Web page (router login page will do, though potential security risk if public, change default pass!)

Then signup for uptime robot and point at your dynamic dns public page, and have full tracking of accessibility.

Expect minor outage periodically as IP changes.

[Bench499d]

Have you tried pinging TOT's DNS servers' IP addresses (these should be in your router somewhere) as these are machines which should be on TOT's network as opposed to on the Internet, from the point of view of your computer.

Your public IP address doesn't begin with 100. does it?

[MrTee]

HI

While the previous poster's suggestion to use Google's public IP may be useful I don't think that answers your question, and no need to subscribe to any third parties for dynamic DNS..

I use a tool called Axence netTools this has a tool to monitor connections over time

http://axence.net/en/axence-nettools/

Its free, I think you may need to give them an email address but it is a good set of tools.


Another thing you can do

open a CMD box in admin mode ..

to find your DNS use "NSlookup" to query your DNS directly

at a CMD prompt :

nslookup

it will give out put like :

Default Server: yourdns.foo.bar

Address: 192.168.1.8

>

This will tell you which DNS is serving your device

You can run a continuous ping by added the -t switch.

For example :

ping 8.8.8.8 -t

This will ping forever until you exit

you can also "pipe" the output to a file and check the results later

ping 8.8.8.b -t > c:\temp\pinglog.txt

You can run pathping - which is a combination of ping and tracert

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PathPing

[Konini]

Thanks to all of you for suggestions - I've only had 2 drop outs, at the so-eerie-it-couldn't-possibly-be-a-coincidence times of 9.33pm then 9.33am. Last night for some reason I was nodding off in front of the computer but forced myself to stay awake until 9.33 so I could see if it was going to be a 12 hour thing, but nothing then or at 9.33 this morning either so I'm going to have to put it down to a spooky coincidence. 2 blips in close to 48 hours is very a hopeful sign that whatever was causing the problem has been resolved, I can certainly live with that.

Pinglog is what my ever failing memory was drawling a blank on - you would never believe it, but I used to get paid a lot of money working in the fledgling internet field back in the early 1990's. Now memory issues mean I remember all of the trivia but am missing large chunks of important stuff until prompted, and sometimes even when prompted I still have no clue. That said, I know a lot of things have come a long, long way from what I was playing with 25 years ago. Back then, I thought it very amusing to keep a list of words my nan wouldn't recognise, work collegues joined in on the list and it was a mile long - things like fax and paging and answering machine. That list is now 28 and a half miles long; back in 1991 when I had my (literally brick sized, but thankfully no accompanying battery-pack shoulder bag) 'mobile' phone, working as a sys-op on the information superhighway (or did that term come later?), even I couldn't imagine using phones for looking up the few dozen web sites there was on Mosaic. Actually, I wouldn't have been able to see any point in looking at web sites on your phone. (I still don't, I only have a smart phone because my ipod broke the same week as my mobile, and my husband is still using his old Nokia, held together with an elastic band and will continue to use it until 2g finally dies off - about 18 months in Australia). I turn wifi on once a month or so and update the currency app, and if I forget to turn wifi back off again, my battery is flat within a couple of days instead of a week. That Axence net tools program looks very good, I do remember that it would have been great to have had back in the day. I'll put it to use if my drop outs return.

One thing I did find online was a program called namebench which took an age to run - I actually forgot I'd set it away - and it came back telling me I should change my DNS to google public to gain a 143% efficiency. 143% sounds so much that it's in snake oil territory and I'm not sure if this program passes the sniff test; does anyone have any experience with it, and should I actually change DNS server if my problems are over? (I have always had very nice, very fast downloads using Internet Download Manager and very occasionally qBitTorrent, the rest is just VOIP a couple of times a week, browsing and my husband streaming the football at weekends. Given that I'm going to start the hunt for the best paid VPN so we can watch Australian TV catch up (free ones don't do Australia) will there be any benefit in changing to google's DNS if I don't have problems, even though namebench tells me I can improve by 143%). I know I should know the answer to that question. I was famous for my outstanding memory, I built a career on it; I could do calculus in my head and people thought I was very clever but in truth most of it was down to memory. One short, unexpected and unexplained seizure at the age of 48 whilst sitting quietly reading was all it took to change that. I'm not doddery or anything, I just can't remember things sometimes. The worst thing is I know that I've turned into one of those people who want to know where to write click of if dot should be in capitals or lower case.

Totally off topic here but something I think those helping others may like to read (distraction and waffling is another side effect of my funny turn). When I was helping people configure their internet connections I was always unusually (for me) very patient. It would come as no surprise to me to occasionally discover in chit-chat that someone who had connected his monitor to his computer but didn't realise he had to plug it in to the electricity was actually a doctor or in one of the most bizarre cases a federal judge. I took the attitude that every single one of us came home with a big box one day, all excited, opened it and started to put it together. And we knew zero about computers and had to read the instructions to find out which cable went where. Not just some of us, but every single one of us. Some of the people I had working on the help desk would openly mock those who didn't know basics when they thought I was out of earshot, I could tell good stories about them later, but at the time, and I would only go there when I couldn't find enough people to man the help desk, I would respectfully assume that the person on the end of the phone knew nothing apart from how to turn it on; the doctor - a real, live, no pun brain surgeon, was so funny. I kept asking him to do things, is there a little orange or yellow or green light somewhere flickering, yes? that means you're hard drive is working, but you say that there is nothing on the screen? Press escape. Top right corner of your keyboard. Nothing? Type DIR then enter. Yes, that's the return key. Still nothing? Is the little light still on? Flickering? Can you hear a noise to go with the flickering? OK, try......... 15 minutes I spent on the phone with him, and he hadn't plugged his monitor in. I had asked at one stage, and he said yes and we checked the connection at both the monitor end and the computer end to make sure that they weren't loose. I just didn't think about it not being plugged into the electricity. The one he had at work drew it's power from the computer so didn't have a plug, he didn't know they weren't all like that, I didn't ask. After that we had just about everything that could go wrong, he had my direct phone number and we eventually got him connected up to our BBS on his brand new super-dooper 7,400 modem.

It doesn't happen so much on Thai Visa, and it certainly hasn't happened in this thread, but I am dismayed when I see people being just short of if not out-rightly condescending and purposefully using unfamiliar words, terms and acronyms to those looking for help. It obviously makes them feel superior in some way, but I don't know how they can treat other people like that. When their car breaks down does their mechanic treat them like they don't have a brain because they don't know how to do something a lot of other people can? Does their plumber treat them like a fool because they aren't sure how to change a washer? I'm sure both make a lot of money out of unknowledgeable people, but they aren't condescending and smart ar$e with it. I always looked at it as though I were trying to explain it to my dad. He was a very intelligent, kind and caring person who might have come across something he wasn't familiar with and needed it to be explained to him. As a manager, I tried to make sure all my staff did the same, of course there would be those exasperating people, you'd say to them type whatever, press enter and wait. Just be patient. Then you hear it. Click click click. Don't press any keys, just wait. What are you pressing? You're not, but I can hear the keyboard. Yes, pressing escape because it's not doing anything is bad, I need you to type whatever, press enter and wait until something comes up on the screen. Those kind of people could make you scream. Like the man who deleted command.com. I knew he'd done it, but no. 'Do you think I'm an idiot? I'm not stupid enough to delete command.com' But he had. I wasted 20 minutes of my life with that man. When he got shouty, I did my schoolteacher voice and told him he had a problem and he wanted me to help him and if he couldn't be pleasant to me I wasn't going to be inclined to help him, but after that I went along with it, just imaging that he was my dad who was intelligent but didn't know how to do this particular thing.

I could honestly imagine my dad not plugging the monitor in. I could honestly imagine my dad asking me where he should write click. And all of those other 'dumb' questions. And I was helping people - once we had the internet service, we were inundated; the shell unix users were pretty much no problem, but 99% of the rest were complete beginners, many having got their internet username and password before their first ever computer had been delivered - we were a non profit organisation, users helping users and a disproportionate amount of retired professionals amongst our user base. No plug and play, you had to have Windows 3.1 then install and configure Trumpet Winsock to get onto the internet, then manually enter all of the DNS, Mail and News server IP addresses. Then install and configure Netscape. Then install and configure Eudora mail (we chose Eudora as it seemed the easiest for beginners to be able to set up) and I can't even remember the 4th program, which was a mail reader. I wrote the instructions that went out with the 3.1 floppy (we had to do a few on 5.1 disks). Some, in my opinion unpleasant, people complained that the instructions were too simplistic. They listed every single thing you had to do. I imagined I was writing it for my dad, who knew what a computer was but had never been in the same room as one. When done, I tested them by using my husband as guinea pig. I reset our PC, gave him the instruction sheet and walked away and left him grumbling and mumbling that he didn't want to do it. He is a very highly skilled precision engineer, a toolmaker who can literally split a hair into 5 equal parts, but knows nothing about and has absolutely no interest in computers apart from browsing when everything is set up and working properly. Sometimes I had missed a critical step from the instructions, usually assuming knowledge, and sometimes I had worded things badly, but when done, I knew if he - a very unwilling guinea pig - could do it, anyone could do it. If people got into trouble they were missing something in the instruction. At the top of the instruction sheet, I wrote words to the effect that some of our new users were expert and some beginner so the instructions were written for all, but still some clever sods complained; all I will say is that they were handled accordingly.

The thing is, my point is, that when someone asks for help, those willing to offer advice should treat the person like you're talking to mum or dad or nan. Just because someone doesn't know what an Open DNS IP address is doesn't mean that they are dumb.They might be a nuclear physicist with the highest ever recorded IQ. It means that they have never had the interest in, or needed to look into what an Open DNS IP address is. Elderly women on the phone were the worst. They would tell me that were not clever enough to do all this stuff and needed someone to come around and help them - they would pay for their time of course. I asked them if they knew the recipe for Anzac biscuits or victoria sponge cake and they would reel it off the top of their head. I would tell them that I could make them, but I would have to have a recipe book to do it. They would say of course; no shame in that until you've made it a few times then you'll know how to do it without looking. Then I would tell them that getting the internet configured was just like cooking a cake. You read the recipe all the way through, maybe twice, then you start with the book by your side and add the ingredients and mix and cook them as instructed, following the instructions step by step. They had no out on that argument - read the instructions like you're reading a recipe. Follow the instructions and send me an email to let me know you've succeeded. You wouldn't believe some of the emails I got. People so proud that they had accomplished something that they imagined would be way out of their league, but they did it. The cake analogy, which I used at least once a week over a couple of years resulted in many, many lovely old women coming into the office with a nice homemade cake for lunch.

As I said, certainly not in this thread and I don't think so much on ThaiVisa, but the world would be so much better if everyone who helped did it for the sake of helping rather than making themselves look clever and being able to lord it over others. Often, I find that the worst offenders aren't quite so knowledgeable as they present themselves to be. Sciolists - that is and has always been my favourite word, even if google spell checker thinks it's not a word.

So, on behalf of everybody everywhere that has ever been helped by someone, thank you for taking the time and the effort - sometimes people go to a lot of effort, way over and above what anyone could expect from some internet stranger. Not everybody says thank you, I like to think that they forget rather than any other explanation, so on their behalf I'm thanking you all.