If you are having problems accessing your site, and we can't duplicate the problem, it will help us
find the source of the trouble if you perform a "trace route" and send us the results.A trace route
shows the path that your request takes from your computer to our servers. It will show each "hop" of
your request, from router to router, including the IP address, host name of each router, and the length
of time that each hop took. Three test requests (also called packets) will be sent and you will see the
hop times for each of these packets. A "*" indicates that the request was dropped, or it timed
out because it was taking too long (if a router is down, the request will always time out).
Sometimes a test packet will be dropped by a router because it is a lower priority than a normal http
packet. Packets sent for the purpose of getting a trace route are lower priority than a standard
http packet, so they will sometimes get dropped if the router is experiencing a heavy traffic load.
As a general rule, hops of over than 100-200ms (ms = milliseconds) are getting to be on the long
side. Anything under 100ms is a decent length for a hop. Keep in mind that hop lengths are
dependent on your internet connection, so if you have a broadband connection, all of your hops will be
faster than if you have a dial up connection.
If you're on a Windows computer...
you can open a “Command Prompt” to type a command that will trace
your Internet traffic. It is located under START… PROGRAM FILES…
ACCESSORIES… “COMMAND PROMPT”. When the window appears, type in the
command “tracert www.sturdylink.com”. Of course you may enter
your domain name instead of ours to trace traffic directly to your
server. If you see a “timeout” or long delay before the
request reaches us, then you know will see the location of the
problem. If it is anywhere other than your ISP or us, then
there isn’t much you can do about it, but wait it out. If your
web site or email is sluggish, likely you will see a long delay at
one of the hops coming to us. Most hosting companies send the
reply back the same route as it was requested. We try to
minimize delays by determining the best reliable route back to the
user and send replies through that route..
Type "command" in the Run dialog box and click the OK button:
Now you'll see the DOS screen with the DOS prompt. At the prompt type in:
tracert yourdomainname.com (substitute your domain name for yourdomainname.com)
Wait for the trace route to generate, then click on the "Mark" tool in the DOS screen tool bar
(looks like a dotted outline of a square) and hi-lite all of the trace route information. Click
on the "Copy" tool in the tool bar and paste the text into an email to us.
Here are some other Internet links to help you:
