I've been using PingPlotter for several months -- WORKS GREAT -- it get's my ISP to listen to me. (They use it too)

Lately I've seen something for which I can'f quite figure out the cause, and am hoping someone on this fourm might have an idea.

Setup: two different LAN'd computers (Window 98 and XP Pro) pinging through -- in order -- a linksys router, linksys switch, linksys cable modem into Cox Northern Virginia's high speed internet. (My modem is provisioned by the ISP for 192K up, and 3MB down -- and I almost always attain these speeds on various internet speeds test sites)

To monitor my ISP, I'm pinging my primary DNS -- five hops.

With PingPlotter's ping interval set to 50 ms, all five hops are SOLID.

However, when I decrease the ping inteval below 50ms, I begin to experience significant packet loss on hops 2 through 5 (i.e. the hops AFTER the first ISP router). Hop #1; from my house to the 1st ISP router remains solid.

If I decrease the ping interval down to the 25ms PingPlotter default, I get 30-50% packet loss on each of the last 4 hops, while hop #1 to the 1st ISP router remains solid.

It's almost as if the first ISP router can't handle the sucessive hop pings if they come any faster than 50ms apart.

Any Ideas ... ???

Stumped in Virginia