From time to time internet users will find that their connection to a given site or the internet in general seems to slow to a crawl or become altogether unresponsive. However, even when the problem seems to be limited to a single website or server, the culprit is not always the server on the other end, but can in fact often be a router or switch at another ISP in-between, as well as a problem within your own local ISP, and a simple ping usually does not return enough information to determine exactly where the problem is, only that there is in fact a problem somewhere.
When submitting support tickets for network latency or website time-out issues, our support engineers will often ask you to perform a traceroute. Don’t worry, we don’t really expect you to fully make sense of the results if you aren’t really a computer person, but we do need you to copy and paste the results into a ticket for us.
Windows:
To perform a traceroute in any version of Windows, click Start -> Run, type “cmd” in the Run dialogue, and then press enter. In the screen that opens,find the small icon in the top left of the window that says “C:”. Left click on the “C:” icon, and then select , “Properties”. In the “Edit Options” category on the bottom right side, select “QuickEdit Mode” and click “OK”. A dialogue will appear asking if you want to modify the shortcut: it is suggested that you do so as not to have to perform this step in the future – without it copying text from the Command Prompt is difficult.
Now that QuickEdit mode is enabled, type “tracert <server>”, without the quotes, where <server> is the IP address or domain name of the server you are trying to reach. The result that comes back should look something (but not necessarily exactly) like this:
traceroute superbhosting.net
1 freeport.rapidvps.net (208.84.149.44) 0.101 ms
2 unallocated-host.rapidvps.net (66.35.95.125) 1.412 ms
3 ge-6-14.car2.Orlando1.Level3.net (4.53.46.81) 89.969 ms
4 ae-2-9.bar2.Orlando1.Level3.net (4.69.133.70) 7.000 ms
5 ae-0-11.bar1.Orlando1.Level3.net (4.69.137.145) 7.055 ms
6 ae-8-8.ebr1.Atlanta2.Level3.net (4.69.137.150) 15.538 ms
7 ae-63-60.ebr3.Atlanta2.Level3.net (4.69.138.4) 21.747 ms
8 ae-2.ebr1.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.132.86) 30.703 ms
9 ae-81-81.csw3.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.134.138) 39.161 ms
10 ae-31-89.car1.Washington1.Level3.net (4.68.17.131) 30.864 ms
11 ge6-2.core1.dca2.hopone.net (66.36.224.66) 30.795 ms
12 vl2.msfc1.distb1.dca2.hopone.net (66.36.224.228) 30.342 ms
13 209.160.62.5 30.752 ms
14 www.superbhosting.net (66.148.93.24) [open] 30.412 ms
Linux/Unix:
Performing a traceroute in Linux or Unix is nearly identical to process outlined above for Windows. Simply open a terminal (or ssh session) and from the $ or # prompt, type “traceroute <server>”, instead of “tracert <server>” as done in Windows.
If for whatever reason the results seem to stall and there is no activity on one hop (each line is a “hop”) for more than 30 seconds or so, you may cancel the process by pressing CTRL+C. Whether you have to do this, or it completes normally, copy and paste the entire results into your support ticket, along with any other pertinent information regarding the issue you’re experiencing – this information will assist us greatly in diagnosing any problems, and having it right away will ensure we are able to get to a resolution as quickly as possible. Please also note that not all hops will return valid times, as some (like core routing devices) are configured not to reply top such requests for security purposes – you can learn more here.
We suggest that in cases where you expect the sever is down or unavailable to also try just-ping.com and just-traceroute.com. If you can reach these sites and they are still able to ping your website or server normally, the problem is most likely either with your ISP, or another ISP between you and Superb.
