Summary

Traceroute is a network utility used to determine the path a packet travel through an IP network and is often used for network connectivity troubleshooting.  By showing a list of routers traversed, it allows the user to identify the path taken to reach a particular destination on the network. This can help identify routing problems or firewalls that may be blocking access to a site. Traceroute is also used to gather information about network infrastructure and IP ranges around a given host. It can also be used when downloading data, as if there are multiple mirrors available for the same piece of data, one can trace each mirror to get a good idea of which mirror would be the fastest to use.

Functionality

WebWatchBot monitors an ip address or hostname by performing a Trace Route, enabling:

• Monitoring of the route taken to an ip address or hostname from your monitoring location.
• Monitoring for too many hops.
• Monitoring for time outs.
• Identifying location of bottleneck or blocked access when troubleshooting

Why Use this Watch Type?

• Traceroute is often used for network connectivity troubleshooting. .

Screen Shots

Fields and Buttons

Hop Limit - threshold on the number of hops allowed before WebWatchBot triggers an alert

Hop Timeout - threshold on the timeout exceeded before WebWatchBot triggers an alert

More Information

Traceroute may not list the real hosts. Traceroute indicates that the first host is at one hop, the second host at two hops, however IP does not guarantee that all the packets take the same route.