Server down? ISP down? How do you know? Your server manager wants a traceroute, but you don’t know how to get one. Fortunately, you can learn how in this quick video on using PingPlotter.
Traceroute?
What the heck is a traceroute? A traceroute is simply the route your network connection takes between your computer and your server. A traceroute will let us know who’s network may be at fault.
Using PingPlotter Freeware
If you run a server, be sure to download PingPlotter Freeware so that you are ready should an outage occur. Below is a quick video on how to use the software to get a traceroute. The software is very easy to use and provides valuable information to help diagnose network issues.
Who’s Network?
Server Provider
Not being able to reach your site when you can reach others is frustrating, but you have to take a step back and see who’s network may be to blame. Good server providers run highly redundant networks with multiple internet providers. Outages, especially ones lasting more than 5-10 minutes, are rare. These issues do happen, but we and the data center usually detect them immediately.
ISP
The connection between you and your ISP is far more prone to failure than the connections to a data center. There are many single points of failure in serving an office or home. Typically, ISP issues will impact all of your services or a specific services, such as the ability to send email or the ability to reach web sites.
The Internet
When you request a web page on the internet, your request may be handled by a number of network providers. If you are using Comcast, they may trade data with Level 3, who then passes it on to yet another network before it reaches your server provider’s network. In many cases, we track localized server outages to the intermediate network connections.
Without good network data, getting an intermediary to address a network issues can be difficult. However, if you collect the right information.
Like this Tip?
If you like this tip, please let us know what more you would like to see. Learning how to collect simple diagnostic information like a traceroute can help your server managers quickly resolve problems for you.