Packet Loss or No Packet Loss

Hey all, hoping someone might have some thoughts on how to interpret the attached output.

According to Ping Plotter there is a significant amount of packet loss at the second last hop.

But if I run a standard ping from the command line of the same machine there is no packet loss at all.

I don't not know the inner working of Ping Plotter but I am thinking that the packet loss calculations might be done differently.

Appreciate any insight.

Cheers
Mal

Hey Mal,

When you're running a trace, the biggest thing to remember is that the final hop is the most important. It may be concerning that you see some packet loss in intermediate hops (and not in a command line ping/traceroute), but really this may just be a router downprioritizing TTL expired packets, or some other small little hitch (rather than a malfunctioning router). However, as long as that packet loss you're seeing in that hop isn't carrying through to your final destination, you have nothing to worry about at all! We've got some handy information on this article about this particular issue:

https://www.pingman.com/kb/5

Feel free to let us know if you have any other questions!

Regards,
Hayla

Thanks Hayla - I can see that the 'packet loss' at the second last hop is just the response of the router so I can safely ignoire that.

I have a similar question though I hope you can assist me with.

I am running Pingplotter across only 2 hops from a remote agent on Windows. I can see packet loss from the remote agent intermittently however if I connect directly to the remote agent machine and run ping from the cmd lie I see no packet loss.

It looks to me that Pingplotter is doing something different to the normal ping from cmd line but I do not know what that could be.

Do you have any thoughts as to what could be causing me to see different results? I am thinking it might be related to MTU or something along those lines.

I'd really appreciate any feedback you can assist with.

Cheers
Mal

Hey Mal,

There are honestly quite a few different things that could be playing a factor in the differences you're seeing between PingPlotter and a command prompt ping. We've actually got a knowledge base article that goes over some of the possibilities here (as well as some potential solutions), which you can find here:

http://www.pingman.com/kb/37

Hopefully this helps out! If you have any questions - please let us know.

Best wishes,

-Gary