How do I prove internet outages to my ISP?

Log every drop with exact timestamps for at least a week: run a timestamped ping from Terminal or use a monitoring app, capture your router's event log, and test over Ethernet to rule out Wi-Fi. Then open a ticket and attach a log showing each outage's start, end, duration, and frequency.

How can I log internet outages for free?

On a Mac, run a ping loop in Terminal that stamps every reply with the date and time and saves it to a file. Your router's own event log (reconnections, DHCP renewals, loss of sync) is also free evidence from the ISP's equipment; capture it before rebooting, since many routers wipe it.

What evidence does an ISP accept for outages?

A log that answers four questions: exactly when each outage started and ended, how long it lasted, how often it happens, and whether it was really the line, shown by drops on a wired connection or across every device at once. Speed test screenshots prove speed, not continuity.

Can I get compensation for internet outages?

Many providers' terms include credits for downtime, but almost none apply them unless you ask with dates in hand. Open a ticket, send the evidence through a channel that leaves a record, and ask for outage credits. If nothing changes, escalate to a supervisor and then to your country's telecom regulator.

How to prove internet outages to your ISP

Updated October 2026

The short answer: log every drop with exact timestamps for at least a week. Run a timestamped ping from Terminal or use a monitoring app, photograph your router's event log, and test over Ethernet to rule out Wi-Fi. Then open a ticket and attach a log showing each outage's start, end, duration, and frequency.

You call support, they run a line test, and the verdict is always the same: "everything looks fine on our end." Meanwhile your video calls keep freezing and your downloads keep dying. The problem is not that support is lying to you; it is that their test ran at one moment in time, and your outages happened at other moments. To win this argument you need evidence with timestamps. This guide shows how to collect it, for free, and what to do with it.

Step 1: make sure it is not your own Wi-Fi

Before blaming the provider, rule out the usual suspects inside your home. Your case gets much stronger once you can say you did this.

Test wired if you can. Plug a computer straight into the router with an Ethernet cable. If the drops stop, your problem is Wi-Fi coverage or interference, not the ISP.
Check whether every device drops at once. If the TV keeps streaming while your laptop loses connection, that points at the laptop or the Wi-Fi link, not the line.
Restart the router once, properly. Power it off, wait 30 seconds, power it on. If drops come back within days, a reboot was never the fix, and you have a data point worth logging.
Note which network band you use. Crowded 2.4 GHz networks in apartment buildings drop in ways that look exactly like an ISP outage.

If drops continue on a wired connection, or on every device at once, the problem is almost certainly between your router and the provider. Time to collect evidence.

Step 2: log every outage, with timestamps

One screenshot of a failed speed test proves nothing: speed tests measure speed, not continuity, and a single bad moment is easy to dismiss. What convinces an ISP is a log that shows a pattern: exact start time, exact end time, duration, and how often it happens.

The free way: a timestamped ping log

On a Mac, open Terminal and run:

ping 1.1.1.1 | while read line; do echo "$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S') $line"; done | tee ~/Desktop/ping-log.txt

This pings Cloudflare's public resolver once per second and stamps every reply with the date and time, saving it all to a file on your Desktop. When the internet drops, the replies stop or show "Request timeout"; where they resume, your outage ended. Leave it running for a few days. On Windows, ping -t 1.1.1.1 plus PowerShell's Get-Date achieves the same.

Its limits, so you know what you are signing up for: it only works while the computer is awake, one ping lost to ordinary packet loss is not an outage (look for sustained gaps), and you will have to dig the start and end times out of the file yourself.

Your router's own logs

Most modems and routers keep an event log (usually under something like Administration, Status, or System Log at 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1). Look for repeated lines about reconnection, DHCP renewals, or loss of sync around the times you noticed drops. A photo of those entries is evidence from the ISP's own equipment. The catch: many routers wipe the log on every reboot, so capture it before restarting anything.

Keep an incident list

However you log, keep a simple list you can read over the phone: date, start time, duration, and what it interrupted ("dropped a client call at 10:42 for 3 minutes"). Concrete interruptions make the cost of the problem real to whoever is reading the ticket.

Step 3: what good evidence looks like

When you hand your log to the provider, it should answer four questions:

When exactly? Start and end timestamps, not "yesterday evening".
How long? Thirty 20-second drops per day is a different (and very real) problem than one 2-hour outage.
How often? A week of data showing drops every day beats a single bad afternoon.
Was it really the line? Wired-connection data, or drops across every device, removes their favorite answer ("it must be your Wi-Fi").

Step 4: the support call

Open a ticket and write down its number. Every later escalation builds on the trail. No ticket number means the call never happened.
Send the evidence through a channel that leaves a record, like email or the provider's app, and mention it in the call: "I sent a log of 23 outages from the past week to this ticket."
Ask for outage credits. Many providers' terms include credits for downtime, but almost none apply them unless you ask with dates in hand.
If nothing changes, escalate with the trail: ticket numbers plus your log, to a supervisor first, then to your country's telecom regulator (in the US, an FCC informal complaint takes minutes to file and providers answer them quickly).

Or automate the whole thing

Internet Monitor: Uptime is a menu bar app for Mac that does step 2 for you, permanently: it checks your connection every second, records every outage with exact start, end, and duration, separates the evidence by network (so your home line's record is not polluted by cafe Wi-Fi), and exports a one-click PDF report built to be attached to a support ticket. It is US$4.99 on the Mac App Store, one time, and it collects no data about you: everything stays on your Mac.