MRTG to track ISP

[Kumado]

Hi,

I am trying to set up MRTG to keep records on my servers ( got to do that yet )

One thing I want to keep track of is the ... down time of our ISP. I am in a school setting. I wanted to track and record the down time between myself and the ISP and myself and the Internet. I know there are times that the main trunk coming in goes down, and I know there are times that the line from them to us goes down.

I can't begin to write this is why I am asking, a little more than just clues please.

What would be a good method of doing this.
Is MRTG a good way to see it? ( posted on my website for the school admin as well)
Could I grep a ping to say google.com and somehow test for a match and ping say the ISPs DNS server for the same and graph the results?

If anyone has the time and knowledge, I would be glad of your ideas and help

Thanks

Kumado

[gtmtnbiker98]

Just configure a community string on your ISP's router and the same with yours. You can also configure connection verifiers if you need; however, I would not configure a persistent ping on a third-party domain (might be frowned upon and foreseen as an intrusion attempt).

[Kumado]

hehe yeah, a constant ping would tend to anoy.

What I had in mind was .... maybe have a cron job to do a single or even double ping every 5 or maybe 10 mins and pipe it to something I could evaluate and then map with MRTG.

was a thought - maybe a ping that often would be too much.

What is a community string?

For the moment - I use their dns server so a ping to google or something could potentially get me both answers: if I get a reply at all, my line to the ISP is up, if I get a real answer then I can reach Goolge as well which means I can get outside.

I need to do this so the ISP is not aware. I need to chart the drop out times. There seem to be even more than we know as I tried about 2:30 AM to log in to my server a couple days ago and nothing was available.

Thanks again )