Bizarre Result when Pinging IP Address

Serbian

Whenever I ping an IP address, I get a result similar to below (I'm pinging Ireland.com in this case):

Pinging www.ireland.com [195.7.33.37] with 32 bytes of data

Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2301ms TTL=244
Request timed out.
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=2398ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2300ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2302ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2302ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=2398ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2304ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2306ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2305ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2308ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2306ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2309ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2306ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2304ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2301ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2306ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2303ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2298ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2304ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2302ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2303ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2298ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2302ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=47ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=48ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=48ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2304ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2303ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2304ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2304ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2306ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2305ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2302ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2305ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2304ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2306ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2303ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=47ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2303ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=2401ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2296ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=-2304ms TTL=244
Reply from 195.7.33.37: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=244

Ping statistics for 195.7.33.37:
    Packets: Sent = 54, Received = 53, Lost = 1 (1% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 44ms, Maximum = -2296ms, Average = 81035746ms

All the pings with minus values in them occur together in less than a second. Has anyone seen anything like this before? Makes it difficult to measure the latency of my connection.

trout

i have never seen ping return a minus value ... mebbe it's a bug to do with the round trip time estimation ? (value overruns the upper limit of the var?)

what is your OS ? can you try the test on another machine ?
can you reproduce this behaviour on other destinations ?

what happens if you traceroute to ireland.com ? that may help you find the hole

DaSilva

Maybe its a bug in the ping program, and its outputting the numbers as if they were signed 16bit integers, instead of unsigned ?

ie, instead of -2300ms, its really 35067ms.
I dont know what the timeout is for ping packets, but maybe the server on the other end is getting busy, and queing the ping packets in favour of other traffic, and then replying when not busy, giving you the huge latency, and loss in some cases.

Ghost Train

This link seems to suggest it's a problem with dual core amds, and say's there a driver with a fix. Is it a dual core amd you have?

Serbian

Sorry, I totally forgot about this post :P Yeah, I have a dual core AMD, so that must be the fix. Thanks for that one eolhc.