What is Reddit's opinion of mtr?

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I just realized you were asking for latency/dropped packet testing, not speedtest, my bad! :(

Packet loss and latency are more difficult to check, you can't do it in a browser without some kind of plugin like java. On windows, you can go start menu, search bar thingy, type "cmd" and hit enter. Then type "tracert 8.8.8.8", without quotes, hit enter. A very short tl;dr is this is showing you the route a connection to 8.8.8.8 (a Google DNS server) would take. It also shows you how long hops between servers take, and which server is dropping your packets (if any). This will vary greatly depending on your ISP, your computer's location, and the server's location/ISP. For example if you're on Verizon and trying to connect to a server that passes through Level3's servers, chances are you'd experience very high packet loss/latency during prime time hours because Verizon and Level3 are currently fighting about peering and won't upgrade capacity. Meanwhile, accessing another server that doesn't go through Level3 will work just fine.

Windows 'tracert' is kinda an awful program for doing this, but I do not use Windows systems so I am not familiar with a better tool to do it, sorry :(. If you use *nix or BSD I highly suggest MTR http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/

> I'd also run Ping for life

Or mtr for a cli version that is in the Arch repos so is far easier to install on the live usb.

I think the best thing to do would be to show the engineer the problem you're experiencing, maybe with a program like: http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/

https://www.guidingtech.com/how-to-fix-high-ping-on-windows-10/ could be a consideration as well, let me know if I can help your further

Is this latency to everything? If you are seeing 1-2 second ping times to google, facebook, and netflix you should open a support ticket with Pavlov including those ping times and probably a traceroute or mtr dump.

If it's only this machine that you have trouble with, is it only SSH? What are the ping times to that specific machine? You can use a tool like mtr (http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/, it's also in most package managers like homebrew, apt, and dnf/yum). That should give you a detailed view of which routers are adding the latency.

If it's not the network then the problem is something on the box itself. What is the load on the machine? If it's busy the ssh server might have trouble getting enough resources to respond quickly. If it's a virtual server you might have a contention from a noisy neighbor.

Good luck and let us know what you find out!

Some basic diagnostic tests should help, something like:

ping -t 8.8.8.8

tracert 8.8.8.8

The first command runs a continuous ping to Google's DNS server, though you could use any IP address or website you like. Running this test before/after/during peak hours should demonstrate a noticeable difference in latency and packet loss. Be sure to let it run for at least a few minutes before using Ctrl+C to stop it.

The second test will trace the path you're taking to the same address. You should see higher latency early on in the trace during peak hours, which should then decrease during non-peak hours.

Most technicians at your ISP should be able to interpret these results and see what you're talking about. Make sure you include the dates and times of the tests and include several tests so it's not dismissed as being a "one off" issue.

You could also try WinMTR, another helpful diagnostic tool.

Edit: here's a great speed and bandwidth test: speedof.me.

The challenge with troubleshooting hosted providers is that it's tough to discern between a problem with your ISP's last mile vs their upstream connections vs a problem with your hosted VOIP provider. I like MTR for showing response times and paths, be warned that if your poor audio quality is due to saturation then MTR will just put extra traffic over the wire though.

If you're looking for other services...

Disclaimer - I work for Star2Star

Friendly offer, no more no less - We're headquartered in Sarasota, FL but have partners all over the country. We don't do x dollars per phone per month as our normal pricing model, rather most customers lease or purchase our equipment outright and pay for PSTN service and support. We run a lightweight Linux appliance on site that acts as a gateway to our cloud services, and all config changes are done through a web portal. We use our box on site to monitor the connections we're running on as well as the LAN.

If you'd like to chat with one of our partners in your neck of the woods to get some info I'm glad to introduce you, no pressure though. Best of luck!

That's a great presentation; it's where I always send people when they give me traceroutes and don't know what they're talking about. mtr is a great tool for this sort of thing (if you know how to interpret the results).

>It's the traceroute you always thought traceroute should be.

just tried mtr thanks to you and had to post that your description, while extraordinarily accurate, doesn't quite do it justice imo. check out a screenshot that speaks for itself http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/mtr-text.gif

yup cacti http://www.cacti.net

sedsnewoldg is right it can sometimes be a bit to setup especially if you have a bunch of addon plugins you want to load. but for something as simple as a ping response time graph which is built in , it should be fairly easy to get going

once its working youll quickly get addicted and start graphing all kinds of things... CPU, Memory, Disk, usage... the list goes on; Its very flexible / useful

alternatively just use mtr http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/screenshots.html

This is great, thanks for writing it! I run Logs of Lag, a site that analyzes logs after a game to see how your ping was. A lot of folks want an easier way to test ping.

I'm guessing you're doing a basic round trip ping. Have you considered trying to measure packet loss? That's the more important measure for a lot of people. MTR is a good desktop tool. Ideally you'd test with UDP probes, but ICMP is better than nothing.

If you're on a Linux or other Unix-like operating system, the original MTR. If you're on Windows, WinMTR is probably the best option, although forks with more features (e.g. IPv6 support and TCP mode, which are missing in WinMTR as far as I know) might exist.

Level3 along with all of the major providers have plenty plenty of capacity. Indeed, most of the "highways" have dark fiber that aren't even turned up yet. Just like you can buy a 5/10 or 15mbps Internet connection from your ISP, Comcast and other terrible ISP's choose to maintain service with their ISP's at a particular level.

A tool such as MTR is helpful (but not definitive) to determine if the congestion is in or out of your ISP's network or at the edge.

I'm on Comcast and don't see anything that slow. I recommend using mtr to see if you have a bad hop somewhere along the way. If there's something consistently off, you can send that to your ISP and ask them to look into it further.