Your NBN keeps dropping out. Here's how to prove it.

Why a log works when phone calls don’t

A fault that comes and goes is the hardest kind to get fixed. When your provider runs a test, it runs it at that moment, and at that moment your connection is often fine. So the test passes, the ticket closes, and you’re back where you started.

A log changes that. Twenty dropouts with dates and times, a pattern that sits in the evenings or on rainy days, speed tests on a cable at the modem, and every reference number in order: that’s a fault with a shape. It’s much harder to close, and it tells whoever comes out where to start looking.

We see it on jobs all the time. In our study of 324 fault jobs, faults that came and went were where people got stuck longest.

What to write down every time it drops

The tool asks for these, and so would a technician:

• When it started, to the minute, and how long it lasted.
• Cable or wifi. If a computer on a cable at the modem dropped too, it isn’t your wifi.
• The lights on the NBN box. Which one changed, and to what colour. What the lights mean.
• The weather. Rain and wind matter more than people expect. How weather affects your connection.
• What you were doing, only if it might matter: a video call, a game, nothing at all.

Speed tests that count

A speed test on wifi in the back bedroom tests your wifi. A test that counts is on a cable, plugged into the modem, with other devices off the network and nothing big downloading. Ask your provider how many tests they want and how they want them done; some ask for several, a few minutes apart, on more than one device. Log every one, with the time. Run one in the Speed tests tab at the top of this page.

Every call, every reference number

Each time you contact your provider, write down the date, who you spoke to, the reference number, what they said and what they promised by when. The log marks a promise as overdue when its date passes with nothing after it. That one line, “promised a technician by the 14th, nothing since”, is often what moves a complaint up.

When to send it, and to who

Send the report to your provider first, in writing, and ask for a reference number. If it isn’t resolved, send it to their complaints team. If it still isn’t resolved, it goes with your complaint to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. How each step works, and how long to give them.

Let software keep the log for you

If you can leave a computer on, PingPlotter will record every dropout to the second, around the clock, and you can log the speed tests and calls here. How to set it up.

When the log isn’t enough

Sometimes the provider sends someone, the test passes, and they say it’s your wiring. Sometimes it is. A log can’t tell you which side of the wall the fault is on. A test of the line from your side can. What an independent technician tests and puts in writing.

Your log stays with you

The log is saved in your own browser on this device. It isn’t sent to us or anyone else, and we can’t see it. Save a backup file if you want to move it to another device, and clear it whenever you like. The speed test runs on Ookla’s servers, like any speed test, and never sees your log.