Connection reliability

[stayler]

Hi Guys,

I have a somewhat annoying ongoing problem here that I think the list
may be able to assist me with.  My connection to the Internet is via a
T-1.  I have 6 B chan for IP and 2 for some voice lines right now.  My
connection seems to drop out on a fairly regular basis, at least once
every 2 days, sometime more often for periods of a few sec to over
15min.  They seem to occur at random times and do not appear to be
local in nature, ie the premises equipment, the router is a box called
a "Vina eLink".   I will have at my disposal in the near futer a Bit
Error rate tester, I now maintain a network of 16 DS1 microwave radios,
it pays to have a day job.  In the mean time I'd like to have my
firewall box provide some stats that I could use as leverage with my
account rep.

The Box is a Slackware 8.0 with 2.2.20 and IP Chains on it.  I was
thinking a regular, say every minute ping of 5 packets to a remote box,
someone amenable to me doing this of course.  The resulting information
being saved and collated to show outages with an accurate date/time
stamp.

Ideas suggestions?

Shawn