[X-Unix] How to determine which network component is failing

[Stroller]

Well, in my case the whole point is for the little old lady in  
question to be able to simply reboot the router when her internet  
connection is playing up. She lives in the "granny annex" of the  
house, the router is upstairs on the other side of the main house,  
and she doesn't like having to bother her daughter & son-in-law to  
physically power-cycle the router.

She's on Windows XP, so I want to install as few extra packages as  
possible on her machine (because every package is additional  
maintenance & I have to remember it when I finally need to reinstall  
her PC) and DOS batch-file scripting is quite inferior to Bash. What  
I want to be able to say is "if it's not working, try rebooting the  
router and if it's still not working 5 minutes later then give me a  
call; I'd prefer to be able to give her an icon to click on (which  
calls curl with appropriate parameters), rather than a link to the  
router's webpage, as the latter requires her to remember the password  
(it's just less tidy that way).

I believe the problem at this site to be with the line (maybe it's  
marginal??) because this is her 3rd router (have tried a different  
manufacturer & model) and we've experienced the same thing with all  
of them - the line drops and rebooting the router one or a number of  
times usually resolves the problem. I guess the long-term fix is to  
contact or change the ISP (I don't have much faith in Wannadoo, but  
they'll probably prefer to keep their email address) when the family  
get back from holiday next week, but an icon to click on to reboot  
the Netgear routers I sell would still be very useful.

Stroller.


On 27 Jul 2006, at 10:08, Charles Howse wrote:

> Ummm...the whole point of this thread is to use the shell to find  
> out which network component is failing and fix it.
>
> On Jul 26, 2006, at 1:19 PM, David Ledger wrote:
>
>> I just have a browser link to the reboot in my bookmarks.
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>>> From: Stroller <macmonster at myrealbox.com>
>>> I shall be keeping a copy of these notes in my archive. I shall have
>>> to install curl on a customer's Windows PC and give her an icon to
>>> click which will reboot the router for her.