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I need to know ASAP when my PC loses Internet connectivity. It is of no use to me if my PC waits until it's back online and then emails/SMSs me that service has been restored.

Is there a way to generate a more timely notification, while it is still offline? For example, a notification triggered by failure of a periodic ping?

fixer1234
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Richard Woolf
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  • Depends on what OS you use on the PC you could just write a script to do exactly that. Email will be free as it can re-use the existing internet connectivity. Anything to do with SMS will always be paid (as you need to pay your SMS / phone provider). – Darius Jul 29 '16 at 06:42
  • Whilst I appreciate your attention and taking the time to give me feedback, I clearly state in my question that what you're proposing is IMPOSSIBLE because if the PC loses internet connectivity, it cannot possibly send an email. I clearly ask for an external monitoring system. – Richard Woolf Jul 29 '16 at 10:32
  • I have rephrased my question to emphasise the problem – Richard Woolf Jul 29 '16 at 10:38
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    If your server is publicly visible (pingable from outside world) then your PC or other machine outside the premise can ping in and send you the notification. Or if you can somehow set up your PC with a SIM card (as some laptop have) then you can make the other pc with SIM card access to end email or SMS. – Darius Jul 29 '16 at 10:46
  • Ok without Internet, how would you expect it to notify you, like in what manner? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Jul 29 '16 at 19:17
  • @Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 - I foresee a service where my PC pings a server somewhere every 5 minutes. If the server doesn't receive a ping within 15 minutes, the server will email/SMS me. If you agree that this is an interesting question, please upvote, because right now my question is on hold and I have 2 downvotes. – Richard Woolf Jul 30 '16 at 05:19
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    Kids screaming 'DAAAAAD, internet's down' happens approx. 30 seconds after the event here - Works for me! – JohnnyVegas Jul 30 '16 at 08:18
  • @JohnnyVegas, so your recommended solution is to have some kids? :-) – fixer1234 Jul 31 '16 at 08:43
  • Johnny, there are so many different points failure could occur with Internet communications that you'll never be redundant enough to cover them all obviously. You could setup multiple processes to check at various levels to do some action to be able to trigger some notifications, etc. such as having the server confirm it can reach 4 out of 5 websites every so often and if there's failure send a notification via some method not reliant on that same Internet connection. Have outside server connecting to it to send a notification if it finds an issue at this level. – Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style Aug 02 '16 at 00:41
  • You could have a site VPN tunnel issuing WMIC remote commands from another machine checking something or whatever and so on and so forth. . . People like to SCREAM when things go down for an hour or less about once every other year or so but they never give recognition (or scream in joy) realizing it being up the other 99.9% of the time... Now that's amazing!!! SH%# Happens, that's part of the technology being used sometimes unfortunately... Beep Beep!! – Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style Aug 02 '16 at 00:43

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Since you mention in your other question that this is for a work enviornment, you may want to have a look at Total Network Monitor 2. It is purchased software (not free) but can contact computers (i.e. the one you wish monitored) via ICMP and TCP/IP pings and initiate notifications if they go offline.

Anaksunaman
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