What Latency Monitor Does
Latency Monitor continuously pings your gateway and/or an internet target, charting latency and packet loss over time. It is designed for catching intermittent issues that a one-time connectivity test would miss — the kind of problems users describe as "the internet is slow sometimes."
When to Use It
- Intermittent complaints: Users report sporadic slowness — leave Latency Monitor running to capture the drops when they happen.
- During a network change: Monitor before, during, and after to verify the change actually improved performance.
- VoIP quality complaints: Correlate latency spikes and jitter with call quality issues to pinpoint the cause.
- Wi-Fi roaming troubleshooting: Watch for latency spikes as clients move between access points to identify problematic handoffs.
How to Use It
- Open Latency Monitor from the sidebar.
- Choose your target: Gateway (tests LAN health) and/or an internet host (tests end-to-end connectivity).
- Click Start — the chart begins plotting latency in real time.
- Let it run for minutes or hours — the longer the session, the more data you collect and the more likely you are to catch intermittent issues.
Reading the Chart
The chart plots latency over time. Here is what common patterns mean:
- Flat, low line = stable, healthy connection. This is what you want to see.
- Periodic spikes = possible interference, congestion, or access point handoff issues. Note the interval between spikes — regular patterns often point to scheduled processes or environmental interference.
- Gradual climb = increasing congestion or thermal throttling on network equipment.
- Gaps in the line = complete packet loss, indicating a dropped connection during that period.
Statistics
Latency Monitor tracks and displays the following metrics throughout the session:
- Current latency: the most recent ping result
- Average latency: mean latency across the entire session
- Min/Max latency: best and worst results recorded
- Jitter: variation in latency between pings
- Packet loss %: percentage of pings that received no response
- Uptime %: percentage of the session with successful connectivity
Tips
- Run Latency Monitor alongside a Wi-Fi survey to correlate physical location with network performance.
- Screenshot or export data for documentation — concrete numbers are more persuasive than anecdotal reports.
- Check if spikes correlate with specific times of day (lunch hour, backup window, shift changes) to identify congestion patterns.
- Monitor both the gateway and an internet target simultaneously. If gateway latency is fine but internet latency spikes, the issue is upstream of the local network.
Still need help?
If you're still experiencing issues, contact us or email support@rockriverresearch.com.