How to prove your NBN dropouts with PingPlotter

The program is not the hard part. The hard part is that a dropout has to be happening while someone is looking, and on most visits it is not. A day of PingPlotter on a cable is a record of every drop, with the time and the place it started, and it is worth having before you send for an internet technician to find the dropout or ring your provider again.

What you need

Three things, and the software is free.

• A laptop or desktop with a network port, or a USB network adapter for a laptop that has none.
• A network cable long enough to reach the modem. A WiFi test proves nothing about the line, because the WiFi can drop on its own.
• PingPlotter, from PingPlotter’s own download page (opens in a new tab). It runs on Windows and macOS. The download starts as a 14-day trial, and when the trial ends it keeps working as PingPlotter Free, which watches one target at a time (checked on their site, 17 October 2026).

PingPlotter Free is all a home needs for this. The test watches one target, a well-known website such as google.com.au, and one target is what the free version does.

Setting it up

The order matters. Each step takes one thing out of the chain, so that when the trace does show a drop, there is only one place left it can be.

1. 1

   Take the WiFi out of it

   Plug the laptop into one of the yellow ports on the back of the router with the cable, and turn the laptop's WiFi off. If the internet is steady on the cable and drops on WiFi, you have your answer already, and it is the WiFi.

2. 2

   Take the router out of it

   On fibre to the premises, HFC and fibre to the curb, plug the laptop straight into the NBN box instead of the router. On fibre to the node there is no separate NBN box, so the test stays on a cable at the modem. If the laptop gets no internet at the box, that alone is not an NBN fault: the box can stay locked to the old router until your provider clears it, and some providers need a login (PPPoE) a laptop has not got. Test at the router instead.

3. 3

   Rule out the laptop

   If you can borrow a second laptop, run the same test on it. Two computers showing the same drops is not a laptop problem.

4. 4

   Install PingPlotter and give it a target

   Type in a well-known website, such as google.com.au, and start it.

5. 5

   Leave it running

   Leave the computer on for a day or two, with sleep turned off, through the times it usually drops. Write down the time whenever something drops out on the phone or the TV.

If the first step already showed it is the WiFi, the trace is not needed: a WiFi technician who fixes the coverage is. And if the cable test is just slow rather than dropping out, that is a different problem with a different test.

Check your speed first A speed test shows how fast it is while the test runs. It does not show a drop at 9 pm. Use it for slow, and PingPlotter for dropouts.

How long to run it

A day or two, and long enough to cover the times it usually drops. If it drops at night, the trace has to be running at night.

That is the whole point of the exercise. In our study of 324 filmed fault jobs, an intermittent fault had already had an average of 3.67 technicians through it before us, against 1.21 for a constant fault. The reason is in one sentence of that study: “An intermittent fault has to be present to be found.” A technician who tests on a good morning gets a pass. A trace that ran through the bad evening does not.

How to read the result

A trace is a list of hops: your router first, then the routers your test passes through on its way out to the website, with the website last. For each hop it shows how long the reply took and how many replies never came back, which is packet loss. Pick a result below to see how each one reads.

Pick a result to read

Your home is the problem It's past your house A false alarm

A sketch, not a real result

A sketch of a trace with loss from the first hop, the router, carried through to the end

Hop	Where it is	Response	Loss
1	Your router · starts here	18 ms	12%
2	Provider, first hop	24 ms	12%
3	Provider network	26 ms	11%
4	Provider network	27 ms	12%
5	Between networks	29 ms	12%
6	Website's network	30 ms	12%
7	google.com.au	31 ms	12%

Inside your home

The loss starts at the first hop, your own router, and the same loss runs all the way to the end. Something in the home is dropping it: the WiFi, the router, a lead or the computer. Test again on a cable, then with the router out of the way, before anyone blames the line.

A sketch of a trace with the first hops clean and loss starting out in the network, carried through to the end

Hop	Where it is	Response	Loss
1	Your router	1 ms	0%
2	Provider, first hop	9 ms	0%
3	Provider network · starts here	48 ms	9%
4	Provider network	50 ms	9%
5	Between networks	52 ms	10%
6	Website's network	53 ms	9%
7	google.com.au	54 ms	9%

Out in the network

Your router and the first hop are clean. The loss starts out in the network and carries through to the final hop. With your own equipment out of the way, that is the network's to fix, not yours. Screenshot it, write down the times, and take it to your provider.

A sketch of a trace with loss on one middle hop only, and none at the final hop

Hop	Where it is	Response	Loss
1	Your router	1 ms	0%
2	Provider, first hop	9 ms	0%
3	Provider network	11 ms	0%
4	Provider network	120 ms	38%
5	Between networks	13 ms	0%
6	Website's network	14 ms	0%
7	google.com.au	15 ms	0%

Not a fault

One hop in the middle shows loss, but the hops after it and the final hop are clean. That router is only slow to answer these test messages, which is common. The final hop is the one that counts, and here it shows no loss at all.

Three rules cover most traces. The final hop is the one that counts. Loss that shows on one middle hop and disappears on the next is that router being slow to answer, not a fault. Loss that starts at a hop and carries all the way to the end is real, and it begins at the first hop that shows it. PingPlotter’s own guides read results the same way.

Response times move through the day as more people come online, so do not chase every spike. A steady few milliseconds with the odd jump is not a fault while the speed is good and nothing is dropping out. That is the same jitter question our case study of a noisy NBN fault gets into.

One more case catches people out. If the trace stays clean but one game or app still stutters, the connection did not drop. Try the same thing on a phone hotspot, then on WiFi, then with a different lead, before anyone blames the line. Why an internet connection keeps going unstable walks through the usual causes on the home side.

On HFC there is one more test, at the isolator box on the outside wall, and it is one we do on a visit as part of testing to the boundary, so leave the isolator and its cables as they are.

What to send your provider

When the trace shows loss starting out in the network, with the router and the WiFi already out of the way, the fault is on the network side and the evidence is in your hands. Send your provider:

• Screenshots of the trace at the times it dropped, with the hop where the loss starts in view.
• The times you wrote down, matched to the trace.
• What you tested: on a cable, straight into the NBN box, on a second computer.
• Photos of the NBN box lights when it dropped, and of how it was plugged in when you ran it.

The message can be short. Copy this, fill in the parts in square brackets, and attach the screenshots and photos. On fibre to the node, where the router stays in, say you tested on a cable at the modem instead.

If the provider will not act on it, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman takes complaints about providers. Our post on taking a complaint about Telstra further goes through the steps, and they are the same for any provider. We cannot work inside NBN’s network ourselves, because we are not NBN.

PingPlotter records the dropouts. Our fault log holds the rest: your speed tests, every call and reference number, and a report to send with the graph.

When to call a technician instead

Book a technician when the trace says the problem is on your side: loss from the first hop, or drops that stop when the router is taken out. That is a lead, a socket, the cabling, the router or the WiFi, and our internet technician tests each of them in turn, running PingPlotter on the visit as well, so the drop is watched while we are there. If the line itself keeps dropping and your provider says it is your wiring, NBN fault repair starts from the same evidence, and an independent NBN technician tests to the boundary and puts the result in writing.

If the trace says the loss starts out in the network, you do not need us. You need your provider, and you have the evidence. If setting the program up on the computer is the hard part, that is home tech support, not a line fault.

Not sure what your trace is telling you? Send us a message saying what you are seeing, and we’ll ask for the screenshots and take a quick look. We’ll tell you whether it looks worth a visit: a quick look, not a diagnosis.