<br>Here's a basic rundown of what happens in Ping Plotter when you enter an IP address to trace to.<br><br>1) Ping Plotter does a reverse DNS lookup for that IP address. It waits for the response before continuing. If you know that you don't have a DNS address, you might try adding this IP address to your hosts file to make this situation work faster - Windows can use the name found in the host file and not have to try to find a DNS server.<br><br>2) 35 ICMP echo requests are sent out - separated by the amount of time specified in the Advanced Options dialog (25 ms). These are sent out to reach hops 1 through 35. <br><br>3) As each hop responds with its IP address, Ping Plotter does a reverse DNS lookup (in a separate thread - so it doesn't affect the actual trace performance) on each IP address that responds back.<br><br>4) When the trace interval expires, Ping Plotter sends out another group of ICMP echo requests - this time, though, it only sends out enough to make it to the destination. If, however, it hasn't contacted the final destination, it will send it out up through the "Destination Unreachable" hop. Every fifth set after that, it goes out 3 hops beyond the "Unreachable" hop to see if it might make it to something after all.<br><br>I'm not *quite* sure how you're seeing anything different than this. Let me know if what you're getting isn't consistent with this.<br><br>Ping plotter definitely knows how to "Ping". What it doesn't do is know how to transition automatically between a straight ping and a full trace. It also doesn't know to initiate just a ping - it always tries to do a trace.<br><br>Hope that explains the behavior a bit. Let me know what suggestions you have - and maybe a bit more details on what you're using it for (I still don't have a really clear picture on what you're doing with it).<br><br>Thanks,<br>Pete <br><br>