One of the problems that plagued the late-90’s Internet and played a major role in the eventual bust of the Industry was the lack of speed to deliver the next generation web applications that were so highly touted by the up-and-coming development companies (remember, this was just one of the problems). With so many users […]

A uni-directional traceroute (run only in one direction) can be used to accurately spot a problem area in a route.
If one does see some issues in a traceroute – that start at one hop and carry on forward (e.g. packet loss, or latency past the expected given the distance traveled between the two hops3), then […]

* * *s (or other equivalent 100% packet loss) in the route usually is not a sign of any problems
Certain hosts in the path will simply show a misleading 100% packet loss using applications such as Ping Plotter, which run a trace and then do multiple pings of each hop directly afterwards, despite the fact […]

Security relating to computers and networks has always been a concern for IT managers tending to Enterprise-class operations. Despite all their efforts to keep their networks free from intruders - be it a hacker, a worm, a trojan, or a virus - the biggest security risk to these systems is most often the users themselves. Over time, more […]

Traceroute/tracert-like applications or commands will provide accurate results
Neither traceroute nor traceroute-like applications will provide accurate results. They can not, as using ICMP ping is inherently unreliable, as often the routers in the path, and sometimes even the end host, will be configured to either entirely discard ICMP ping requests, to treat it at the lowest […]

Traceroute can be used to measure performance
If performance is used to mean packet loss and latency to an end host, traceroute cannot be used to accurately measure performance, especially if one also means the actual bandwidth available/throughput. The best – and simplest – way to do measure packet loss and latency reliably, by using a […]

There are a number of popular misconceptions and misunderstandings about traceroutes. Traceroutes are used by computer networks, small ones like in your office or large-scale ones like the Internet, to determine which route will be taken by packets (a block of data) sent across IP (Internet Protocol suite) networks. Traceroutes are often used for network troubleshooting; by […]