Hello, I'm a new user to Ping Plotter and I think it's a great tool!

I live in California and I've been having connection problems with a game server that I pay for that is based in Atlanta, GA. ( IP 66.150.29.207 ) When I run PP ver. 2.41 it shows the IP's for hops 11 & 12 are constantly changing at 3-4 second intervals.





This really seemed strange so I tried it with Neotrace Pro ver. 3.25. It didn't do it. The IP's stayed the same. Why is that?

Thanks <img src="/forums/images/icons/cool.gif" alt="" />

Route changes are relatively normal. They are sometimes hard to deal with by an application, though, so many traceroute applications just ignore the fact that the route could change.

This is what happens when you put NeoTrace into "Ping" mode - the first time you enter the target into NeoTrace, it does a trace route. Then, as it continues to collect data about these destinations, it pings every target it found the first time. This is a pretty standard method, but has several shortcomings, including that it doesn't understand route changes, so you often collect data about routers that aren't participating in getting packets from you to your destination (and/or back again). Basically, the first time pass it finds the route, but after the first pass, it doesn't check back to see what the route is again.

If you don't want to see information about the route changes in Ping Plotter, you can mask out those route changes. If you need help with this, please check out our tutorial (http://www.pingplotter.com/tutorial/) or send an email to support@pingplotter.com.

Feel free to follow up here with any related questions.

Thank you for the prompt reply. I do appreciate it.

I was asking about the IP's switching because I thought perhaps it had something to do with the game server disconnecting everyone after a short time. Trying to do some newbie trouble shooting from my end.

Thanks again <img src="/forums/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

The route change you're seeing isn't what I would put as a primary suspect for your disconnects. The route change you're getting looks like relatively normal load balancing, and it shouldn't being having a negative impact on your situation.

The Ping Plotter screenshots you posted don't show any obvious problems. The latency jump appears to be speed-of-light related (just the physical distance between California and Atlanta).