gHacks technology news » tracert http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:33:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 WebHopper Internet Traceroute Tool http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/04/webhopper-internet-traceroute-tool/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/04/webhopper-internet-traceroute-tool/#comments Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:45:21 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=9637 The traceroute command lists the servers – which are also called hops – that the connection uses to reach the destination. There is basically never a direct connection to a regular website, it will always use a number of servers before it reaches the destination. Windows users can use the tracert destination command to display the list of servers that the current connection uses to reach the destination. This can change depending on the routing and begins with the local IP and usually ends with the destination IP.

The command has a few disadvantages. It is not displaying additional information about each hop and it is kinda difficulty to process the information. Web Hopper makes use of a graphical user interface and several additional features that might make it worth the download. The country of each server on the route to the destination is shown. It is sometimes quite fascinating to see that connections to a server “next door” will make a trip around the world before they reach the destination. This can be used to analysis connection problems like bad pings to game servers.

Another advantage of Web Hopper is that you can also traceroute emails which the traceroute command in Windows cannot.

web hopper

Web Hopper displays the country of the server, the server name and the time it takes to reach it. A trace is updated automatically and results can be saved in text format for further processing. The Internet traceroute tool comes with two shortcuts that can grab the active browser url to process it automatically and the option to view a url in the browser.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/04/webhopper-internet-traceroute-tool/feed/ 2 Traceroute From Multiple Locations http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/30/traceroute-from-multiple-locations/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/30/traceroute-from-multiple-locations/#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:32:17 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=5308 The Traceroute command displays the list of Internet hops that lie between your local computer and the remote computer. It provides an excellent way to identify connection problems because it is actually showing you the hop that is causing the problems.

Just Traceroute (via Digital Inspiration) takes this a step further by issuing a traceroute command from multiple locations in the world. Different locations, especially when they are from different parts of the world, use different “ways” to reach their target which could give additional information about the cause of the connection problem.

The services is using servers located in the United States, Netherlands, Australia and Singapore to run the traceroute command.

tracerouter multiple locations

The results can be forwarded to an email address. The very same window offers a way to copy the all four traceroutes to the clipboard directly.

Tags: , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/30/traceroute-from-multiple-locations/feed/ 3 Monitoring Internet Reachability in Real-Time http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/15/monitoring-internet-reachability-in-real-time/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/15/monitoring-internet-reachability-in-real-time/#comments Thu, 15 May 2008 11:35:07 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=4133 What’s the first thing you do when your Internet connection is not working ? I changed my reasoning from thinking that it was related to my computer to one that assumed the Internet Service Provider was responsible for the outage. Well that’s not 100% true but I know several signs that tell me if it is my fault or the fault of my ISP.

I usually restart my router to be on the safe side but that’s it. Sometimes you can make a connection to the Internet but that connection feels slow, you get disconnections and websites that are not loading properly.

One way to find out if the problem is located on your side is to perform a tracert command to the target server. If that tracert times out you pretty much know the IP address of the server responsible for that along with information about the country the server is in.

internet black holes

This is also the basic approach of Hubble, a service that monitors Internet reachability in real-time. Instead of using one tracert at a time they send out more than 100k every 15 minutes to monitor reachability problems throughout the world using a Google Maps mashup to provide a map of so called black holes, meaning servers that are unresponsive or have a reduced reachability.

The interesting information for the users are the IP addresses or ranges of those servers and the country column of the table. Sorting the column by country reveals problematic server at a glance which can help determining if the problem is located at your end.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/15/monitoring-internet-reachability-in-real-time/feed/ 6 eToolz Network Toolset http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/11/etoolz-network-toolset/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/11/etoolz-network-toolset/#comments Sun, 11 May 2008 11:57:09 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=4090 It is sometimes required to issue a ping or tracert command to identify the source for a slow Internet connection or no connection to a server at all. I usually use those commands when I notice that websites that I own run slow or are not responsive at all. This can also be useful if you are a gamer and want to test your ping to a game server or find out how your connection is routed to the server. Several companies, like Blizzard for instance, request a tracert and ping before they even look in the matter.

Most operating systems have those tools on board and it is normally not required to use an external tool. Many users however do not like to work with the command line in Windows and prefer a graphical user interface instead. Many also have difficulties issuing the correct commands, e.g. finding out how to save the result in a text document automatically.

eToolz is a collection of network and Internet tools that provides a graphical interface for several common commands. This includes ping and tracert but also DNS and whois lookups, mail checks, the retrieval of http headers, time synchronization, pagerank check and list with useful information (default ports, domain extensions).

etoolz

Most functions come with several options. It is for instance possible to select one of six whois databases, define timeouts, ping counts or the maximum amount of hops of a tracert. Every echo in the program can be copied normally. Five languages are supported: German, English, French, Portuguese and Dutch although a few of the information are still not translated and therefor in German.

The developer of the product uses Google Translate to provide an English version of the homepage, ever heard of Nazi lookups ? Yeah, me neither.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Related posts

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/11/etoolz-network-toolset/feed/ 1