Skip to content 
I have a theory that technology has a mind of its own. I have Fiber to the Home (FTTH) and I recently noticed that my network connectivity is intermittent.
I get about 2-3 hours of uninterrupted Internet connection but will randomly get 5-10 minutes of downtime.
Whenever a technician from my ISP comes around to check, they don’t find any issues because it’s suddenly working perfectly.
Sneaky.
However, I have proof and we will be looking at how you can perform such network stability tests on your network so that you don’t feel like you are going crazy.
In simple terms, Network Stability is about a computer network being able to reliably support the users’ activities, whether on a home network or in a business environment.
When on a home network, the focus is usually on the internal home network supporting Internet browsing activities (streaming movies, playing games, video conferencing, and so on).
On the other hand, network stability in business networks should address both access to internal systems (e.g. servers, databases, applications) and access to external networks such as the Internet.
In this article, we will look at some factors to consider for Network Stability and tools that can be helpful to perform a Network Stability Test.
Performing such a test is useful not only to detect problems in a network but also to prevent issues in the first place.
Factors Affecting Network Stability
Before you conduct a Network Stability test, it is worthwhile to consider the factors that can affect the stability and strength of a network. In this section, let us look at a few of them.
1. Network Connectivity Mechanism
Devices can connect to networks wirelessly or via a wired medium. On internal networks, this will either be through Wi-Fi or by using LAN cables.
When connecting to the Internet, options include radio, satellite, copper cables, fibre, and so on.
Generally speaking, wired connectivity media are more stable than their wireless counterparts because they are less susceptible to interference.
For example, you may have noticed a call drop/video quality when using your Wi-Fi-connected phone near a microwave.
This is because the radiation from the microwave affects your Wi-Fi signal. As such, it is recommended that critical applications such as servers should be connected to the network using cables.
Drilling down further, even within the world of network cables, some are more stable than others.
For example, fibre is better than copper cables when it comes to external interference because it uses light to transmit data.
Finally, these different connectivity media offer different speeds. For example, Wi-Fi 802.11n is able to offer theoretical speeds of up to 600Mbps, while 802.11a can only offer up to 54Mbps.
For wired cables, Cat 6 copper cables can offer up to 1Gbps, while Cat 6a can offer up to 10Gbps.
2. Connectivity Distance
Distance also plays a role in network stability. In wireless connections, the farther you are from the wireless access point/router, the more unstable your network connection is going to be.
This is why it is important to check for dead spots/zones when setting up a wireless network so that the routers and access points can be properly positioned for maximum efficiency.
For example, my wireless router was initially positioned in my living room and I could hardly use the Internet when sitting in my bedroom.
Moving the router to a more central location in the house allowed for better connectivity from everywhere.
Cable connections also have distance limitations. For example, most LAN cables (Cat5, Cat6) have a distance limitation of 100 meters.
This limit will not be an issue in most homes, but it becomes an important consideration in business environments, for example, connecting two different buildings.
3. Network Devices
The health of the network devices used also affects the stability of the network. In one case that I consulted on, the customer was meant to be receiving 100Mbps from their ISP but was only getting about 30% of that.
Upon troubleshooting, we discovered that one of the edge router’s network interfaces was faulty. Switching the ISP link to a different interface fixed that problem and allowed them to get the maximum bandwidth.
Another thing to consider with network devices is the capacity of the device to support the required connections.
For example, most wireless routers and access points have a maximum number of clients that they can support before they start behaving erratically (e.g. wireless clients being dropped randomly).
On this point, it is important to consider that the network device has the required uplink capacity to support all its downlink connections so as to reduce network bottlenecks.
For example, if a network switch has 1Gbps ports used to connect several high-capacity servers, testing needs to be done to confirm the capacity of the uplink from that switch to other parts of the network.
In such cases, a 10Gbps port may be ideal. Alternatively, multiple 1Gbps ports may be bundled together for increased capacity.
4. Bandwidth
The last network stability factor we will consider is bandwidth. While this can affect both internal and Internet links, it mostly applies to the latter.
When the bandwidth available is not enough to cope with the network traffic, users will experience frustrating and intermittent connection.
In the 30% of 100Mbps example that I mentioned earlier, users were complaining that they couldn’t work effectively during peak periods (around 2 p.m.), which made the business consider upgrading their bandwidth. Thankfully, they decided to verify before going to their ISP.
It is also worth noting that some ISPs rate-limit their customer’s traffic once it goes beyond a certain point or once the customer has used up the assigned “data bundle” for that billing period.
Network & Internet Stability Testing Tools
Now that we have seen some factors that can affect the stability of a network let’s look at a couple of tools that can help us perform network stability tests.
These tools can be used independently or together, depending on your type of network.
Ping
Ping is a simple network utility that allows you to test that a destination device (IP) is reachable from your own network. How is this helpful for network stability?
Well, ping works by sending multiple packets (requests) to the destination and waiting for the response.
By doing this, Ping can determine how long it took for the reply to come back (latency) or if the reply even comes back at all/within the required timeout (packet loss).
Ping is available on most operating systems (Windows, Mac, NIX-based systems) and running it is as simple as typing “ping” followed by the IP address of the target device.
You do this from the command prompt (Windows) or Terminal (Mac, Linux).
<pre> ping <ip_address></pre>
Note: If you have a working DNS, you can also ping a hostname or fully qualified domain name (FQDN). Ping will first try to resolve the name to an IP address and then ping that address. This is another feature of Ping that you can use to verify your DNS settings.
Some operating systems like Mac and Linux will continuously run the ping command until you stop it (using CTRL+C) while others like Windows will run it a specific number of times.
This default behaviour can be overridden in both cases. You can just type “ping” and press Enter to see the command options for ping.
One question that you need to answer is: “What IP should I ping?” This will vary depending on your use case.
If you are testing the stability of your internal network, then you want to ping a different device within the same network (it may or may not be within the same VLAN).
For home users, however, you are more concerned with your Internet connection. As such, you can ping publicly available systems such as 4.2.2.2 (DNS run by Layer 3 communications), 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS), or 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare DNS).
In the example above, I pinged 4.2.2.2. 6 packets were sent with no packet loss. My average round-trip was 108ms.
Notice that the packets are also sequenced (e.g. 0, 1, 2) which is how ping knows which reply belongs to what request.
In the case of my intermittent internet connection that I shared at the beginning of this article, once I noticed the issue, I left a continuous ping to 4.2.2.2 running on my laptop. Here are some screenshots (I have cut it for the sake of brevity):
Notice that between sequences #450 and #785, I didn’t have an Internet connection.
Using the default Mac timeout of 1 second, it means I lost internet access for about 5 minutes i.e. (785-450)/60 seconds. Only if someone from my ISP will listen.
When using ping, keep in mind that your connection medium and distance may also play a role.
For example, this is what happens when I connect to my neighbour’s Wi-Fi and I’m far from his wireless network (don’t worry, I have his permission):
In this case, the problem is not my neighbour’s connection to the Internet but my connection to his wireless network.
A way to confirm this will be to ping your internal network’s default gateway.
Before we leave this topic of Ping, there are a couple of points to note:
- Ping uses ICMP for its test. Some firewalls block ICMP which means ping may not work. As such, ping doesn’t always tell you if a target is online or not – it only tells you if that target is reachable from your own device.
- Latency and packet loss are not always directly proportional. You may be getting good round-trip times but with a lot of packet loss because something else is wrong with the network.
- The closer you are to the target device, the better the latency is going to be. For example, Google has caches in my region for their DNS servers which means I get a better result than when pinging 4.2.2.2 or 1.1.1.1.
Finally, there are online tools such as this that you can use to run ping tests, for example, on mobile devices.
Wireless Network Analyzers
Wireless network analyzers can scan, survey, and analyze Wi-Fi networks and their performance.
This is useful for detecting dead zones, areas with low wireless coverage, wireless interference, and so on.
One of my favourite tools for this is NetSpot, which has a free version. Using the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), I was able to position my wireless router for optimum connection around my house.
Speed Tests
Various speed test websites allow you to test the performance of your internet connection. Please note that these tests are not always accurate depending on when you perform the test.
For example, you will likely get different results if you perform the test on a corporate network during peak periods vs. off-peak periods. Example websites include speedtest.net and fast.com.
A noteworthy mention under this topic is iPerf which is a tool that you can install on your computer to measure maximum available bandwidth.
As previously mentioned, this test is best performed when you can reasonably get the entire bandwidth used by the test device.
FAQ
What is Network Stability?
Network Stability is about a computer network being able to reliably support the activities of the users.
What are some factors that affect the stability of a network?
Factors like the medium of connection (wireless vs. cables), the distance of the connection, the capacity and health of the network devices along the traffic path, and available bandwidth can affect network stability.
How can I test the stability of my network?
There are several tools that you can use to perform a network stability test including ping, wireless network analyzers, online speed tests, iPerf, and so on.
How does Ping work?
Ping uses ICMP to send requests to a target device and waits for a response. Depending on if and/or when the reply comes back, Ping can determine network latency as well as packet loss.
I don’t get a good wireless signal in some parts of my house. What can I do?
The farther you are from your wireless router or access point, the weaker your wireless signal will be. Other things can also hinder your wireless signals including thick walls, interference from electrical devices, and so on.
You can use wireless network analyzers such as NetSpot to assess the performance of your wireless network. You may also need to reposition your wireless device.
An online speed test shows me that my ISP is not providing the bandwidth they claim to be giving me.
While your ISP may not be honouring their contract, it is important to note that online speed tests are not always accurate.
To improve accuracy, perform the speed test during off-peak periods or when the test device is the only one using the entire bandwidth.
Conclusion
As a network user, you sometimes know when your network connectivity is slow. It’s easy to prove when the network is completely unusable, but in other cases, it’s just a nagging feeling.
In this article, we have looked at some factors that can affect the stability of your network including wired vs. wireless connection, faulty devices, and available bandwidth.
We have also discussed some tools that can help you confirm your suspicions including ping, Wi-Fi analyzers and speed tests.
While we have mostly focused on the individual/home user, the concepts discussed in this article can be applied to corporate networks and useful for network administrations.
