Help Reading Traceroute?

[Glowball]

My host says we're overloading the server but our uptime monitoring service says there are dropped packets. We have hours where the server is unavailable, but most of the time it's up and running fine. Can someone give me an opinion about what is happening? I think there are packets dropped at that last hop, on the server's internal network. There may still be overloading issues on the server but I think this shows at least a network issue. We saw the same traceroute (basically) for 4.5 continuous hours the other night. Thanks!

IP Address: 12.164.31.211
Traceroute from: Boca Raton, Florida
Traceroute started on 2005-02-28 at 03:00:37 (GMT -7).

--- Traceroute ---
Selected device eth0, address 198.64.168.196, port 47958 for outgoing packets
Tracing the path to 12.164.31.211 on TCP port 80, 30 hops max
1 198.64.168.193 (198.64.168.193) 0.300 ms 0.325 ms 0.191 ms
2 ge-1-1-0-3.r01.bcrtfl01.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.28.142) 0.287 ms 0.286 ms 0.273 ms
3 p4-0-0-0.r01.asbnva01.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.5.66) 31.420 ms 31.319 ms 31.294 ms
4 p16-1-0-0.r21.asbnva01.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.5.21) 31.311 ms 31.357 ms 31.288 ms
5 verio-gw.n54ny.ip.att.net (192.205.32.17) 32.565 ms 32.295 ms 32.262 ms
6 tbr1-p011701.wswdc.ip.att.net (12.123.9.114) 34.155 ms 33.259 ms 32.981 ms
7 tbr1-cl4.sl9mo.ip.att.net (12.122.10.30) 57.524 ms 57.233 ms 57.578 ms
8 tbr2-cl2.sl9mo.ip.att.net (12.122.9.142) 57.293 ms 57.128 ms 57.287 ms
9 tbr2-cl7.cgcil.ip.att.net (12.122.10.45) 57.369 ms 57.317 ms 57.105 ms
10 gbr5-p40.cgcil.ip.att.net (12.122.11.58) 56.638 ms 56.531 ms 56.561 ms
11 ar1-p310.gdrmi.ip.att.net (12.123.193.161) 66.030 ms 65.918 ms 65.872 ms
12 12.124.124.194 (12.124.124.194) 66.869 ms 66.746 ms 66.665 ms
13 12.2.81.2 (12.2.81.2) 66.338 ms 66.256 ms 66.291 ms
14 * 12.164.31.211 (12.164.31.211) [open] 67.415 ms 67.044 ms

 

[pansophic]

According to your traceroute, occassionally the destination host is not sending responses to your traceroute requests. It is impossible to tell for certain whether these packets are dropped because some layer 2 device is dropping them on the server's network, or if the host itself is not responding because it is overloaded.

Since no packets are dropped prior to the destination device, your problem definitely exists between 12.2.81.2 and 12.164.31.211, but where in between is impossible to tell for certain.

Personally I've never seen a layer 2 device drop a packet, but that doesn't mean that it is not possible. Given my experience though, I'd be looking real hard at the destination host.


pansophic