High packet loss with Akamai?

I'm working on a performance issue between 2 sites in 2 different states and I'm seeing a lot of packet loss in PingPlotter when it passes through Akamai networks. Is this normal?

Hi BDT,

Thanks for writing into the forums!

The packet loss that you're seeing on hops 8,10,11,12 in your screenshot is likely just Akamai's servers being configured to down-prioritize ICMP echo requests with a TTL (Time To Live) of 0. So yes, this is pretty common with a variety of devices.

In general, as long as the final hop is responding well then you can ignore any packet loss on intermediate hops. If, on the other hand, you do see issues with the final hop then you should trace the issue back up the route to see where it starts. Here are some examples of common network problems.

Let me know if there are any other questions I can answer for you!

Thanks,

-Poe