Monit and laptops

[David Blank-Edelman]

Hi-

Have loved Monit for many years. This is the first time I’ve considered using 
it on a laptop so I thought I would write to see if there is anything I should 
be wary of.

Here’s the situation: I have a laptop that will randomly just start losing 70%+ 
of packets. If I cycle the interface (ifconfig en0 down then up) it always 
resets and is fine for another random while. Have been trying to debug this for 
months, but just decided in the meantime I should find a way to automate this 
cycle the network in a packet loss situation “fix”.

It seems like Monit would do just fine with a config that said “ping this 
address and if you have N failures in time T (or cycles), cycle the interface”. 
My only concern is how it might handle situations when the laptop sleeps or 
partially sleeps (or wakes up and doesn’t have wifi for a bit). I don’t think 
I’d want it to be flapping things in those cases. 

Should I worry about this?  Is there perhaps a clever way to say “only go into 
corrective mode after N number of successful pings have occurred” as a way to 
make sure it is only taking action when the laptop is actually in use? Any 
other concerns?

Thanks!

     — dNb