Ping Plotter

PingPlotter is a network troubleshooting and diagnostic tools for Windows User. It uses a combination of traceroute, ping and whois to collect data quickly, and then allows you to continue collect data over time to give you the information you really need to indentify on your Internet Connection to the server. You may download PingPlotter Freeware on your local computer to trace your domain name or IP address using the PingPlotter application.

BENEFITS
Ping plotter offers some unique value for network monitoring and troubleshooting on Microsoft Windows.
- Graphically display performance metrics about the route of your data takes to a server.
- Monitor network performance over time, capturing the moments when problems surface.
- Zoom in on a problem period and construct a compelling case to have someone help you solve a problem.
- Get notified when there is a network problem.
- Save data or images, and send to others for review
- Troubleshoot without having to call your ISP, allowing you to know about the problems before they do.

ANALYSIS
Below is the exmple of normal connection of pingplotter result images obtained.


As you observed from the above traceroute result, there was 9 hops required to reach our server. Each hops represents a router or server that it has to pass through to reach the webserver and there was no packet loss during the route. You may also saw that the IP address for each hops and DNS Name if available. The Avg and Cur show an average of 9 milliseconds for response time and latency. From this graph, we may conclude that the there was no problem with the connection from the user end to the web server.

Below is an example of our oversea server which having connection problem while accessing our server.


As you may observed from the traceroute, it requires 14 hops to reach the server. The numbers of hops may increase if you are tracing from a high network system or to far distanced server such oversea. You may also observed that there was a packet loss on 2nd hop and starting from 10th hop, there as a massive packet loss. This is enough to prove a connection problem from the user end to the server. It also requires an average of 324 milliseconds and 330 of latency for reaching the server. From the graph, we can concludes that there was a connection problem from the user to the target server.

GLOSSARY

  • Hop - You’ll notice that as you go down the Trace Graph from top to bottom, the Hop number increments. What the Hop number shows you is that, for instance, data from you to the target hits the device at Hop 1 first, and then goes to Hop 2, etc. al. Those hops you see are most likely network routers or servers, but they really could be anything that will forward our Ping requests.

  • PL% - The percentage number of data packets that have been lost in the current Sample Set. So if you have your Samples to Include: set to 10, and five of the last ten traces PingPlotter sent to that hop didn’t even make it back to PingPlotter, your PL% for that hop will be 50. So PL%, or packet loss percent, gives you a number at a glance for that hop of how many packets have made it out and should have made it back. Obviously a high packet loss percentage here isn’t a good thing.

  • IP - The IP address for that hop.

  • DNSName - The DNS name for that hop. If you’re seeing a ------------ instead of a name, PingPlotter wasn’t able to get DNS information for that device.

  • Avg - The average response time in milliseconds for the number of samples in that Sample Set.

  • Cur - The Cur column shows you the roundtrip time (the Ping time) in milliseconds for data to make it to that hop and back again. Another term for this roundtrip time is latency.

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