New and improved… as of 12/12/2019.

Target audience: Computer users.

How to test your Internet connection

and impress your geeky friends

First, you will need to understand the difference between Internet

Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and version 6 (IPv6). See, you probably learned
something already:)
Almost all of the systems I worked on, before I retired, were utilizing
IPv4 addressing. The IP address of your computer is just like the address
of your house. The mailman would probably not be able to deliver your
mail without the correct address, and likewise, without a valid IP address,
your information would not be delivered to your computer and, as you
may imagine, the mail would certainly get mixed up if two houses had
the same mailing address. So it is the same with the electronic messages
that your computer uses. The IPv4 address of your computer consists of
4 bytes or 32 bits. It is usually represented by 4 numbers separated by
dots (.) like this 128.109.32.16 . These are decimal numbers that
represent the binary values of each section of the address. If you are
really serious about understanding this address scheme, you’ll have to
learn to convert binary numbers to decimal and back. It really confuses
things, at least for me. Anyhow, this address contains enough
information for the mail (data) to find your computer anywhere in the
whole world. The address is split into a network address and a node
address. I guess you could say the network address is like your city and
state and the node address is like your house’s street address. Two
houses in different cities could have the same street address (node
address) but the complete addresses are different because of the city
and state (network address). OK. This is probably too much detail for
most of you at this point but, if I haven’t lost you yet, I also want to tell
you about IPv6 addresses. IPv4 addresses consist of 32 bits. This allows a
maximum of 2^32 or 4,294,967,295 different addresses. This seems like
a lot but in today’s world there are so many computers that we are near
to running out of usable IPv4 addresses. So they use ‘tricks’ to allow
more computers to operate on the Internet. Introducing, ta ta ta taaa,
IPv6 addressing. IPv6 addresses are made up of 128 bits. This allows up
to 2^128 or 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,455
addresses. IPv6 addresses are represented by eight 16 bit numbers
represented as 8 four digit hexadecimal (or hex) numbers separated by
colons (:). An example might be
fe80:0ad6:aab5:0009:cdf8:4b22:b673:5d78. I hate to overload you right
now but sometimes you will see an IPv6 address that looks like this
fe80::cdf8:4b22:b673:5d78%6 . The double colon (::) tells you that all of
the missing numbers in between the colons are zeros. It’s just a
shorthand way to indicate a bunch of zeros. The %6 at the end is your
computer’s way of telling you this is a hex or base 16 number. This new
IPv6 address scheme fixes the problem of running out of IPv4 addresses
for quite a while. I heard that this new scheme has enough addresses to
give each person on the face of the Earth as many addresses as there are
in IPv4 now. Another way I heard it put, is that they could give out
1,000,000 IPv6 addresses every second, since the earth formed 4.5
billion years ago and still would have only used 10% of the available
addresses by now.

Throughout this document, I have referred to the computer’s address as

a TCPIP or IP address. The correct format is TCP/IP and stands for
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. There is a possible test
question right there.

The below steps should work whether your system is setup for IPv6 or
IPv4. Just realize there is a difference in the setup. If you have
understood all of this, you know more than most techs about IP
addressing.

It’s always frustrating when your connection goes out. It is a very good
thing to know that it was working and just stopped vs having to set it up
from scratch. So, if it was working, I’d think twice before making any
configuration changes. I suggest if you do, write them down or record
them somehow so they can be backed out.
A typical Internet connection in your home.

In this drawing, PC1 is connected via Wi-Fi radio waves and PC2 is
connected via CAT5 cable (RJ45 or wire). The router and modem may be
just one piece of equipment

When things don’t work, It can sometimes be difficult to narrow your

problem down. Here are some troubleshooting tips that may help:

For the following tests, you can bring up the command prompt by
clicking on the Windows Icon, usually at the bottom left of the screen,
and typing cmd (enter).This should bring up the command prompt
window and look something like this.
To test the internal setup of the Internet communications (or TCPIP
stack, it is also called) on your computer enter ping 127.0.0.1 -t
(those are zeros not Os). 127.0.0.1 is built in to all computers that are
setup to use the Internet protocol and represents the address of itself.
This tests the setup and function of the TCPIP stack in your computer. It
tests the ability of the computer to both send and receive data packets
over it’s IP infrastructure. If this is not successful, your computer has a
serious internal problem or has not been setup properly to use the
Internet.
You can also use the newer Powershell to accomplish the same thing.
Powershell is a newer version of the command window which features
many improvements. Click on the Windows icon and type
powershell(enter) then, to do the same test as above, enter
test-connection 127.0.0.1 -count 20
This is what mine looked like:

There you can see what the IPv6 address of my computer is. There are a
lot more features in the test-connection vs ping. When you are at the
Powershell prompt, ping is actually translated to a version of
test-connection that’s made to look just like the ping command output
but I like the test-connection command format. If you want to see all
about test-connection just type help test-connection -full
at the powershell prompt, it’s good if you have insomnia.
Here is an example of a successful test using the cmd prompt.
(Use Ctrl-C to stop the test.)

OK. If the internal workings of the IP stack are good, the next step is to
check the connection to your default gateway device (usually your
router). First you will need to find the IP address of your default gateway
device.
Bring up the command prompt and type: ipconfig (enter) . Your
screen should look something like this.

This shows that my current connection is Wireless LAN adapter 2:

If you do not have a connection showing an IP address then you don’t
have an active IP connection. I would try to troubleshoot the connection
setup on the computer. It could be the NIC or wireless setup on the
computer. There is a widely used protocol that allows your gateway
device to assign an IP address to your computer upon boot up. It’s called
DHCP which I believe is short for Dynamic Host Control Protocol this
could mean that your computer’s address is not necessarily always going
to be the same but usually it is. So, obviously, if the connection to your
gateway device is down or it is not functioning correctly, your computer
won’t receive an IP address. If this failed here I might try rebooting the
modem and/or router and then the computer. If you don’t know what
this means, don’t worry about it just restart you computer.
It is possible that you have more than one active connection but unusual.
The active connection will have an IP address assigned to the connection.
So, looking at the information on the active connection, note the Default
Gateway IPv4 Address. In my case it is 192.168.0.1 . You should get a
constant connection to it. You can use the IPv6 address if that’s what
you have.
Of course the same test can be done under Powershell but I also like the
get-netipconfiguration command . Here’s an example:
At the cmd prompt, type ping (Default Gateway IP Address) -t. like this:
ping 192.168.0.1 -t (enter) or if you are at the Powershell
prompt test-connection 192.168.0.1 -count 20
(enter(of course use your gateway address not mine)). Let it run for
about 20 lines at least (I know in my example, I only let it run 19 times.
My bad.). Ctrl-c will stop it.

This indicates a solid response. No time outs and note that the times are
very consistent. It should always be this way. Your times may vary from
mine some but should be very consistent. If you get nothing but
time-outs, it means your connection is broken. If you get times varying
from 10ms to 200 ms to over 1000ms sometimes, this is an unreliable
connection. If the connection is copper (CAT5 wire), look for damaged or
frayed wire or broken or loose connectors. If the connection is Wi-Fi it
may mean there is radio frequency interference. If you suspect this is
the case, you can try changing the frequency that is used by the Wi-Fi
connection. But first make sure there are no RF noisy devices next to
your computer or equipment. Fluorescent lamps are notorious RF noise
generators.

Here are the Powershell results. Note the times.

It is easier to see the time differences.
I don’t like those longer times. But because, in my case, the connection
is Wi-Fi, the longer times are probably caused by some radio frequency
interference. Now that I think about it, the same was true of the IPv4
tests. I may have to look and see if I can change the setup to avoid this
interference (which I’ll show you I did later).
OK Now to check the connection from your default gateway device to
the Internet. Most of the time, your problems will show up here.
Enter ping 75.75.75.75 -t (This pings a Domain Name server
on the Internet that should always be available)

This shows a consistent connection. No time outs and times are

reasonable and consistent. If there are skips or timeouts or the times
vary widely, this indicates a problem. Problems at this point are most
likely outside of your house. I would call the provider and ask them to
check it. They usually have some techs that can test your line while you
are on the phone with them. (Hopefully, they will speak good enough
English that you can communicate with them.;)
The Powershell commend is
test-connection 75.75.75.75 -count 20
Here are the Powershell results on my system:
Here is an example of an unreliable connection. Notice that the times
are fairly consistent but the intermittent timeouts indicate a connection
problem. Because my system utilizes Wi-Fi for this connection, I suspect
radio frequency interference.
During my system testing to create this document, I noticed that the RF
connection from my default gateway (the router in my case) to my
computer seemed somewhat unreliable. Note in the screenshot below,
the upper half of the screen vs the lower half. The upper half was done
with the Network Interface Card (NIC) setup to use the 2.4GHz radio
frequency band and the lower set is using the 5GHz band. Of course, my
router and NIC supports either but not all do. Because my connection to
the default gateway device is Wi-Fi, the intermittent longer times are
probably due to RF interference.

Notice the time variances.

If you have somewhat of a connection to the Internet, you can check
your system’s connection reliability and speed by going to
www.speedtest.net and press GO . Here is what my results were: Note
the two graph lines under the speeds. This shows a stable connection for
both uploads and downloads. If the connection speed varied, the lines
would indicate the changing internet speeds which typically indicates a
problem.
Clear as mud? I hope this helps.