Proving to ISP that Wingate is not dropping connections...

[javerwey]

I've been tracking connection uptime and disconnects from 2 clients on my LAN. One tracks the Wingate Server on the LAN, the other tracks the ISP Gateway Server. I'm getting 100% uptime to the Wingate machine and 95% uptime and numerous disconnects to the ISP.

Any ideas on how I can prove that it's the ISP that's causing my connection issues and not Wingate?

For some reason I cannot run the connection monitor on the Wingate machine (app cannot see ISP directly) so that limits what I can track.

Thanks

[javerwey]

Just to add...

I've started noticing "(dead)" after the external NIC Gateway IP on the Network tab. Is this telling me that my ISP link is disconnected? Is this status logged?

Thanks again.

[adrien]

Hi

This gateway monitoring uses ARP lookup packets at a regular interval. If it doesn't get a response within a certain period, it deems that the gateway is not responding to ARP.

depending on the connection type you have, and how your default gateway setting is configured on the WinGate machine, this may not be giving a proper result, so the question is, how does WinGate connect to the Internet? Is it through another LAN-based device like a DSL/NAT router?

Regards

Adrien

[javerwey]

The Wingate machine has 2 NICs. One attached to my LAN, the other attached to my ISPs Waverider Wireless Modem.

I'm now tracking 3 locations from 3 clients. The external NIC on the Wingate machine (the internal NIC is always up 100%), the ISP Gateway, and a Public Website. Am I correct in assuming that if I'm up 100% of the time on the external NIC, then Wingate is up 100% as well?

[javerwey]

Problem solved.

After monitoring the Modem, ISP gateway and external website connection uptime for 24hrs. I saw that I was getting about 50% uptime to the gateway and website and over 200 instantaneous session disconnects. I also saw over that time period that when hitting the Modem IP, I was getting a large number of lost packets and some downtime. Bottom line, nothing definitive I could go to the ISP with.

So, because I had to get working over a citrix connection that didn't like my unstable environment, I went out and purchased a Netgear RP614 (63$ CND) and replaced my Wingate box with the Router.

After 1 firmware upgrade, and no changes to the client setup, I am now consistantely getting 99% uptime to my ISPs Gateway, and 96% uptime to an external website (Google now hates me). I still get a lot of lost packets but no immediate disconnects of a session.

Now, I'm not saying that it was all a Software issue, there are two NICs, and a somewhat old HP tower in this equation, but that is how I solved the problem i was having. I never used Wingate's email features so the Hardware Gateway was an easy workaround for me, and the client setup with the Netgear Router is easy and works as expected for all clients, which was not the case with Wingate.