Hi SANJOY,

Thanks for writing in on the forums!

What you're seeing on your first hop likely isn't "real" packet loss how we normally think about it. Your router is likely configured to treat the ICMP Echo Requests (the type of packets that PingPlotter uses by default) differently from regular (TCP and UDP) traffic. When they get these requests, they may down prioritize them (or not respond them at all) in an effort to make way for other network traffic. We cover this concept in quite a bit more detail here:

- One poorly responding router

The results that you're seeing at the final destination in your traces are what you really want to focus on. If you notice a pattern there that seems like it may be causing issues, then you can start to track those lines back up through the previous hops in the route to see where that pattern begins. If you're interested, we cover this tactic (with some "practice steps") in our Getting Started Guide:

- Find the problem

We've also got a short tutorial video that covers the general idea here as well:

- https://youtu.be/3Raj7tX0TUQ

Hopefully this helps clear things up! If you have any questions or if there's anything else we can do to help out, please don't hesitate to get in touch (support@pingman.com).

Thanks,

-Poe