tool for monitoring intermittent Broadband?

[fraxinus]

I am struggling with intermittency with my Broadband connection - I seem to be experiencing dozens of brief breaks in service every day, which can mess up FTP transactions and downloads. Upload speed is also sometimes very slow.

I am certain these are my ISP's problem, not mine, and I am pressing them to do something about it. But I could use some data to back up my complaint.

Simple question - can anyone recommend a reasonably user-friendly tool that I can install which will gather data about the performance of my Internet connection, identifying slow periods and outages, which I can then supply to my ISP in statistical or graphic form?

Forgive me posting a query like this when clearly there are so many network monitoring tools out there, but I'd be grateful for a recommendation for this particular task.

Thanks in anticipation. I am using Linux Mint 13 64-bit, fully updated etc.

[roseway]

What router do you use?

[Dutch_Master]

Wireshark is the tool you need, IIRC it has a daemon function to have it run unattended so you can catch intermittent faults/disconnects and writes to a log file too.

[fraxinus]

Thanks to you both for your suggestions. I am installing Wireshark and will try it out!

I have been using two different Netgear routers - a wired-only DG834 and a new wireless N600. Same symptoms and issues with both.