mesartwell Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Is there anything like a thumb drive size tool that you can plug into network drops to test for connectivity to the Internet? Not like putting a tone on a line, which requires physical access the punch panel. After spending a ton of time yesterday lugging my laptop and a Ethernet cable around checking to see if drops were active, I came up with this idea...This has to already exist Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 You could probably build one from an Arduino board with an ethernet module, just have it ping an address that's almost guaranteed to be up (or perhaps several well known addresses). You could have it run a series of tests and display the result on an RGB LED or an LCD text panel, for example red/"No Connection" for a totally dead port, orange/"DNS Fail" for internet connectivity with no DNS, green/"Success" for internet connectivity with working DNS and perhaps blue/"Local Only" for local connections without internet access. Tests could be performed against sites like bbc.co.uk, wikipedia.org, google.com, nbc.com and could be tested by domain and by IP. Common router/gateway addresses could be included too like 192.168.1.1. The thing could easily run from batteries, and I'm sure you could probably have it log each result too, so if you had a large number of ports you could plug it in and have it keep logs of IP acquired and ping results (possibly requiring a button if some sockets are dead, otherwise it won't know it's plugged in). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DingleBerries Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 It may be possible to use a small business card "server" to send out request to a server... but then you will have to go back and check logs. OR the business card could have LEDS! that tell you yay or nay. IE dropped request gives you a red light and a good response gives you a green.. I think i found my Christmas break project lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mesartwell Posted December 5, 2008 Author Share Posted December 5, 2008 Guys this exactly what I was thinking of! Like 3 status LEDs that would give the results of the ping. Think this could be a good segment? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Also, it'd work out more expensive than an Arduino, but a Gumstix may be smaller and/or even more convenient to work with. Linux is very functional on Gumstix devices and some models already have an integrated ethernet port. Another piece of information either could log is what speed the connection is, though I'm not sure either Gumsticks or Arduino Ethernet Shields support GbE. Still something to think about though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DingleBerries Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 This is what I had in mind, LINK. And THIS one is pretty cool to. Like moonlit pointed out, Arduino and Gumstixs are smaller and more convenient to work with, but this can just be a specific purpose piece of equipment. DarkBlueBox had a small telent server set up, if i can find that post i may take a few ideas from there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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