If you are also seeing packet loss from these points all the way to the final hop of your test, that points to a problem on the device first showing packet loss or on the inbound connection to that device.

However, if you are not seeing packet loss all the way to the final hop, this apparent packet loss may not be an issue.

Some providers are rate-limiting how often they respond with the TTL-exceeded ICMP packets used by traceroute and similar tools like the Packet Loss Test. This is done to prevent attacks against these routers, since responding to these packets requires much more CPU time than simply forwarding the packet does. If the router is set up to rate-limit, it will respond to a certain number of traceroute packets per second, and once that many have been received, it will stop responding to them for that second -- which will appear as packet loss. You are not losing any "real" traffic, assuming the final hop of your traceroute isn't showing any loss.

got feedback? got feedback?

Any feedback you provide is sent to the owner of this FAQ for possible incorporation and shown publically as well.

by Xyc edited by JMGullett
last modified: 2007-04-26 17:18:05