The Net Uptime Monitor Story

For more than four years, the lead developer of Net Uptime Monitor suffered with a flaky internet connection. His broadband cable connection, from the biggest internet provider in the USA, worked great – most of the time. It seemed that early in the morning the connection would drop out multiple times, sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes for minutes. Some days it would be better, some days worse.

The “tech support” on the phone was no help. It was always “It’s working ok now”.   It seemed like it might be related to heat or the time of year, but without specific records of outages, how can you know? And how can you convince your provider that the problem is real?

So a program was written to detect those failures and keep a detailed log. Presented with this specific information, the internet provider got serious. It took a lot of technician hours, monitoring the connection, onsite inspections, and even digging up the cable, before the problem was discovered.

Finally, it was discovered that the cable that entered the building through an exterior wall was actually two pieces. Hidden inside the wall, there was a connector joining the outside cable with the inside cable. That connector was loose! When the sun hit that outside wall in the morning, the heat caused the metal connector to expand and the connection failed. When it cooled off, the connection became stable again. Ten seconds to tighten that connector and four years of frustration was over!

Since then, that simple program has been polished and enhanced to the present Net Uptime Monitor utility. Your problem might be very different than a loose connector, but Net Uptime Monitor will help you and your internet provider understand what’s happening – and get them to take you seriously!

Net Uptime Monitor is the product of an independent software developer in Arizona, USA. First offered for sale in September of 2011, Net Uptime Monitor is now licensed by tens of thousands of users in more than 70 countries.