Traceroute: http://www.accesscom.com/cgi-bin/traceroute.cgi
The most common source of lag on a Palace server is network congestion on the net somewhere between the user's home computer and the server.
The source of network congestion lag can be anywhere on the net and is typically intermittent.
Utilities like traceroute, etc are useful for identifying the location of network lag.
The traceroute link above gives you a handy web interface to the UNIX utility 'traceroute' that will examine the route between the Chatserve palace server and your home computer or the home computer of any of your palace guests.
If you want to trace the route from Chatserve to your home computer, the IP address of your computer is automatically filled in for you. If you want to trace the route for one of your palace guests, get their IP address from your palace and entr it into the form.
Reading a Traceroute: The output of a traceroute is a series of numbered lines like the one below. Each of these lines represents a router or other piece of equipment between you and the Chatserve Palace Server. These routers represent stops along the route.
4 p2-1.sanjose1-nbr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.3.197) 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms
The breakout of each numbered line is as follows...
- Line Number - 4 in the example
- Router Name - p2-1.sanjose1-nbr2.bbnplanet.net in the example - The name will often tell you what network the router belongs to
- Router IP Address - (4.0.3.197) in the example
- Hop Times - 6 ms 6 ms 6 ms in the example - These
times represent the amount of time required for this leg of the
journey. The times are in milliseconds (thousandths of a second) and
they represent three samples of the time for this leg.
What to look for: There are several possible problems to look for in a traceroute
- Big hop times - Large hop times (bigger than 500ms) indicate network congestion or other problems at one point in the route
- Routing Failures - If a hop fails completely, it will be indicated by a * or a !H. The * simply means the hop did not complete in the maximum time allowed and "timed out". The !H is a more severe failure and means the router was unable to find a route in it's routing tables.
- Loops - A routing loop is indicated by one or
more routers being repeated several times within the traceroute.
What to do: If a traceroute shows a problem in the Hypersurf end of your connection, let us know right away and we'll get it corrected.
If it shows a problem on your end, contact your ISP and let them know so they can take corrective action.
If it shows a problem in some connection in the middle, you will most likely have to wait it out until the responsible party gets the problem corrected.
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