If You Have an Issue With Connectivity, Perform a Traceroute
If you experience an issue with connectivity, then the first thing you should do is perform a traceroute. Our expert IT staff can support you better and faster if you provide the traceroute when first opening your support ticket.
What is a traceroute?
Traceroute is a computer network diagnostic tool for displaying the route (path) and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network.
How can you perform a traceroute?
Traceroute is included by default in Windows, Linux and Mac OSX operating systems. Additionally, a traceroute can be performed using these online tools: Central Ops Traceroute, Network-Tools, and Ping.
For Windows
- Navigate to the start menu and click on “Run”
- Within the run menu type “CMD” and press Enter. This will open the command window.
- Now that you are in the command windows type “tracert <Protection_IP>” for expample: “tracert 94.33.22.2”
- Press enter. Please then copy and paste the outcome in your ticket.
For Mac OSX and Linux
- Open Terminal
- Run “traceroute <protected_IP>” for example “traceroute 94.33.22.2”
- Press enter. Please then copy and paste the outcome in your ticket.
Example:
laptop# traceroute 69.252.80.75 traceroute to 69.252.80.75 (69.252.80.75), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 192.241.219.253 (192.241.219.253) 3.128 ms 3.241 ms 3.363 ms 2 198.199.99.242 (198.199.99.242) 9.985 ms 10.153 ms 10.272 ms 3 sjo-bb1-link.telia.net (62.115.34.17) 1.810 ms 1.827 ms 1.809 ms 4 tata-ic-303244-sjo-bb1.c.telia.net (62.115.14.50) 1.791 ms 1.776 ms 1.758 ms 5 if-3-2.tcore2.LVW-LosAngeles.net (63.243.205.14) 15.014 ms 14.981 ms 14.976 ms 6 xe-0-2-1-0-pe01.onewilshire.ca.ibone.comcast.net (173.167.59.181) 26.377 ms 7 te-2-0-0-2-cr01.losangeles.ca.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.82.41) 25.530 ms 8 he-2-13-0-0-cr01.sanjose.comcast.net (68.86.89.221) 28.602 ms 25.797 ms 27.768 ms 9 he-0-6-0-0-cr01.qwest.comcast.net (68.86.89.122) 54.177 ms 50.163 ms 54.150 ms 10 te-0-0-0-1-ar01-d.ndcwest.comcast.net (68.86.93.62) 53.219 ms 56.667 ms 53.189 ms 11 te-3-1-ur03-d.ndcwest.comcast.net (68.86.132.46) 53.936 ms 52.618 ms 52.778 ms 12 urlrw01.cable.comcast.com (69.252.80.75) 51.671 ms 51.038 ms 54.088 ms
What does a traceroute show?
What traceroute results show is each 'hop' from the user to the protected proxy or server. Servers are not directly connected to one another, there are many routers the traffic must pass through to get from point A to point B. Think of a city transit station where each stop is a 'hop'. You must pass through several stops (hops) to reach your destination. When you run a traceroute, it shows traffic performance at each of the stops (hops) along the way.
How do we support connectivity issues
Our support staff will first try to reproduce the problem. When it is reproducible, we can find where the problem exists and apply a fix. If the problem is outside of our network, we can contact that up-stream provider to let them know there is a problem. If we do contact the up-stream provider, they will ask us for traceroute or MTR data.
It is best to conduct the traceroute during the time of the problem -- otherwise it will not accurately report the network issue at the time of the incident.
Remember - if you experience an issue with connectivity, then the first thing you should do is perform a traceroute. Our expert IT staff can support you better and faster if you provide the traceroute when first opening your support ticket.