Phantom packet loss is being shown when using pathping in connection with asynchronous routing - although there is no real loss.
Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com
Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com
Wed Jun 7 10:06:26 UTC 2006
> The only part that I don't get is that you can mtr to him without
> packetloss. Although the path in-between may be different, the final
hop
> packetloss should exactly equal what he sees when mtring you. A
round-trip
> is a round-trip, and results should be identical regardless of who
> originates. I can't think of any way this would be different unless
echo
> and echo-reply were being rate limited independently.
If the time was different then the packet loss would
be different. Perhaps the customer runs the tests during
his busy period when he is concerned about making sure
there is no delay. Then, later in the day, after his busy
period is over he takes the time to contact his ISP. The ISP
then runs some tests which show there is no packet loss
at all. To be sure this is not happening, synchronize the
tests and run simultaneously.
Try tcptraceroute because this more accurately reflects
the traffic that is flowing.
http://michael.toren.net/code/tcptraceroute/
http://tracetcp.sourceforge.net/ is a windows tool
that is similar.
The open source tool LFT can be built to run on Windows
under cygwin http://pwhois.org/lft/ but they have this
warning on their page:
Many people have complained about various problems on
the Windows platform. Both LFT and the WhoB client
compile and run well under Cygwin environments on
Windows. Unfortunately, Microsoft's changes to the
Windows IP stack (as of XP Service Pack 2) reduced
their raw socket functionality significantly as part
of their security bolstering process. These changes
have effectively stopped LFT from working properly
while using TCP. LFT's UDP tracing and other advanced
features still work properly. For more information on
Windows raw sockets, consult
www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/sp2netwk.mspx#EIAA
This may have nothing to do with your MTR issue but it
does make one wonder whether a Windows machine is safe
to do performance testing. In any case, the LFT people
think that their non-TCP features still work properly
on Windows and this is a tool that you can also run
on your end. Worth a try?
--Michael Dillon
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