How-To: Ping, Ping, Ping, Trace Route! (Part 1)

By Web Hosting Help Guy

Ping & Trace Route: What Are They?

You may or may not have heard the term “ping” when talking to one of your tech savvy friends. Maybe someone has told you to “ping” them when you get out of work to meet up for dinner? You may have wondered what they were talking about or where they picked up this new lingo. Well both “ping” and its cousin “trace route” have been around for quite a while.

Ping and Trace Route are both computer network tools that can assist a user in determining the speed, health and route of their IP network:

Ping works by sending packets of data to a particular server or “host” and requesting a response from that server which will also include packets of data. The sending computer will then measure the total time it takes for the packets to make the round trip. It will then report the fastest, slowest and the average time that round trip took. It will also report any “packet loss” which is essentially data that didn’t make it to or from the host.

Trace Route works in a similar fashion to Ping by sending packets of data to a particular host. Instead of measuring how long it takes for the data to make the round trip, Trace Route measures how long it takes to get through the numerous network routers or “hops” between your computer and the host you specified.

Both tools can be effective in helping diagnose slow website or email performance. Several factors can affect the speed of your website and email such as:
• Distance to your web server
• Amount of “hops” to your web server
• Technical issues with a network router within the path to your web server

Packet Loss (Booo!) can occur anytime there’s an issue with the network. Packet loss will appear as an asterisk in the Ping and Trace Route reports. Packet loss is more worrisome when it occurs during a Ping Test than when it occurs during a Trace Route. This is because occasionally network equipment will be configured to not allow Trace Routing and those “hops” will appear to have complete packet loss when, in reality, they’re just fine. We’ll show you how to tell the difference in Part 3 of this article.

Part 2 (continue reading)