Looking for software that tells me where Internet congestion is located

rh555

Hi,

I am connecting to a server in the U.S. and most of the time it works but every once in a while I can't get any data from that Server but the Server is still working. So somewhere from Ireland to that Server in the U.S. there must be a data congestion.

I def. have enough bandwidth on my end so the slowdown happens somewhere else. I did traceroute and the packets get to the server but traceroute doesn't tell me anything about network congestion just ping times from each network point along the way to the server in the U.S.

So I guess I would need to find a program that would send out some data and tells me the speed at each individual network point to my U.S. server. That way I would find out where data gets stuck and my ISP can route around it.

If anyone has any ideas please let me know.

Thx

DemonOfTheFall

Your hypothetical program would have to be located on a server somewhere, because your home internet location isn't going to have enough upload speed to pump out the packets to test this sort of thing.

rh555

So there is no way to find out where the slowdown happens?

I have 2MBit upload so i think it should be enough to test it if I find a software. I mean traceroute is actually sending out packets just doesn't really tell me anything about the speed.

Thx

JonathanAnon

I thing that Ping Plotter should be able to help you with this.

rh555

Thx, I'll try the Ping Plotter.

rh555

Looks like I get extremely high Jitter rates at 2 network points. Could that be the problem?

at network point 192.205.33.93 (ggr2-p360.n54ny.ip.att.net) I get jitter of about 50 not sure it that could be a problem.

Also this program doesn't really seem to tell me about speeds either just ping time, although this has the added function of showing the Jitter.

Thx again

rh555

Ok, I think i found a program that will do what i am looking for called pathneck but unfortunately it only works for Linux.

If someone knows about a similar program like pathneck for Windows please let me know.

Thx

watty

you can try tracert

mickzer

Have you looked at this:

http://www.tamos.com/products/commview/

mickzer.

rh555

Thx, I'll check it out.

rh555

To watty:

Unfortunately tracert only tells me the ping times from each network point along to my destination server but not where a congestion happens because it uses very small packets that go through no matter what.

As an example if you go to speedtest.net and chose a server in the U.S. or Australia yor speed will most likely be slower than if u were to connect to Dublin. Thats because there is some network congestion along the way. However tracert wouldn't tell you where the slowdown happens - just the ping times are slower because the distance is greater and the tiny packets traceroute uses are going through anywhere except if the server is completely down.

The server I am connecting to sometimes doesn't give me any data at all although tracert shows everything is ok. Again thats due to the small packets.

There are actually quite a few Linux tools out there that do exactly what i am looking for but I don't really wanna install Linux on my computer.

Here are some links if anyone is interested:

http://www.icir.org/models/tools.html
http://www.usenix.org/events/usits01/full_papers/lai/lai.pdf
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Ehnn/papers/infocom05.pdf

tuxy

rh555 wrote:

There are actually quite a few Linux tools out there that do exactly what i am looking for but I don't really wanna install Linux on my computer.

Run one of the live cd's then.

watty

@rh555 if the problem is not your own ISP, you can do nothing anyway.

It's debatable what tracert actually measures since intermediate routers may give direct ICMP a lower priority to respond to, nowadays, to avoid DDOS attacks. On some networks, especially contented wireless links (e.g. ripwave), there is a direct and exponential relationship between ping times and congestion/contention.

If tracert looks OK then at least nothing is actually "broken". You can use a large ping (-l option?) to any point on the route you are suspicious of, or starting at home to each point on route in turn shown by Tracert..

Except nowadays because of anti-DDOS measures, diagnostics even of the advanced Linux nature applied to an intermediate router WILL show imaginary congestion as the routers will only pass information timely fashion, and deliberately slow any data directed at them such as direct ping

Sponge Bob

In plain english

Routers along the way cannot tell the difference between denial of service pings and quality of service pings

Therefore they treat them all the same and reply very slowly . This can give misleading results .

You may even find that pinging a router further out gives much faster pings than pinging the router before it ( nearer you) does.

Thats because the nearer router is passing a ping back to you not responding to one directed at it .

watty

Thanks Bob. I must get you to re-write all my reports. Do you charge much ?

rh555

Thx for all the replies. So pretty much what everyone is saying there is no way to find out where the slowdown happens. My ISP said they might be able to route around the network points that are slowing it down.

They said they did it for gamers which connected to a server in the U.S. and had bad ping times. I am not even sure how an ISP can just change the way an internet signal gets routed.

As for the LiveCD - thats a good idea actually. Wasn't thinking about that. Any preferable Linux distribution out there?

The Linux tools seemed to have been developed by AT&T and big universities and there are actually major papers written about finding internet bottleneck using these tools.

So I guess I'll try the Linux tools and I'll see if they give me any results. The problem still is that even if I find the bottleneck and lets say its somewhere in the U.S. if my ISP is actually able to route around it but I guess I'll see that after I'll find the problem.

Thanks again for the help

watty

Ubuntu or Kubuntu