Copyright: Copyright © 1998 by Pete Ness


Contents

Thanks for using Ping Plotter Freeware!

Ping Plotter Freeware is an enhanced graphical trace route program.  A "trace route" program uses Ping and ICMP echo requests to trace the route a packet takes between your computer and a final destination.  Ping Plotter does this - and throws in multi-threading, enhanced statistics, and a multi-threaded high speed engine.

The freeware version of Ping Plotter is full freeware.  You're welcome to use it as much as you want without buying it.  There is a "shareware" version of Ping Plotter as well, which has significantly enhanced features.  Feel free to try it out (30 day full-featured trial) at www.pingplotter.com.

Introduction

Initial Setup

Operation

Options

Reporting

Support

Note:  This freeware version is based on a release done in early 1998.  While it has been updated slightly since then, most of the development effort for Ping Plotter has gone into the shareware version.  If you wish Ping Plotter had a specific feature, you'll probably find it in the shareware version.


Initial Setup

Ping Plotter is pretty simple, but there are some initial options you may need to set to get best results.

1)  If you have a 256 color (or less) display, you may want to turn off the graph colors (see Options).

2)  Depending on the speed of your internet connection, you may want to change some of the threshhold values (see Options).
3)  Trace to your favorite web site (keep in mind that some sites block ICMP echo requests - ie: Microsoft, Hotmail, etc.).

4)  Right-click on the graph and use that menu to turn on and off additional display information.


Introduction

Ping Plotter was inspired by the need to find out why an Internet connection was so erratic - particularly when playing online games, but also during other activities.  Sometimes it was really fast, other times terribly slow.  I wanted a way to find out (easily) where the problem was and then be able to use the information I gathered to send to the person that could fix the problem.

Basically, Ping Plotter is a trace route program - but adds some graphs, plus some serious performance upgrades.  It uses the multi-threading capabilities of Windows to check performance on all hops in the route at the same time.  This has several advantages:  1)  It's a lot faster.  2)  All hops are tested at the same time - rather than many seconds apart - so the comparison is better.

Another advantage of Ping Plotter is that you can set it to a continuous mode - where it will test the same route over and over again - forever if you want.  That way you can watch the performance over a period of time without having to re-run the program over and over again.

The graph is what's really cool, though.  Being able to visually see where the problem lies is great.

Notice the jump at hop 4 there?  That indicates the problem lies between hop 3 and 4.  And it's pretty easy to tell!


Operation

This is where most of the work happens.

Specifying the trace address

Let's start out with a quick test.  In the "Address to Trace" field, type "www.windows95.com" and then either hit Enter, or click on the Trace button.

Setting the number of times to repeat

Almost immediately, you should see the beginnings of the trace appear on the right side of the screen.  By default after install, the "# of times to trace" is set to unlimited, so Ping Plotter is just going to keep pounding away at that same site.  You can set this to an actual number and Ping Plotter will stop after it does that number of traces.

How often does it repeat?

By default, it will do a new trace every 15 seconds, but you can change that by using the "Trace Delay".  You can either use the up/down arrows to change the time, or you can type in your own time.  It accepts hours, minutes and seconds, so you can type something like "20 minutes", or "1.5 seconds", or "2 hours" in this field if you don't want to use the included times.  Be careful if you use anything below 10 seconds here, though.  If you specify a speed that's too fast, you can overflow your internet connection and slow down your trace times.  If you have a T1, you can pretty safely do 2 seconds here - and some modem connections can go as low as this as well.  It's kinda cool to watch it happen this fast.

What's included in the graph then?

The "Samples to Include" options lets you roll some of the older samples off the graph.  I like to leave this at about 10 (the default), so that the graph only represents the newest times.  This option also specifies how many samples to include in the text data when you select the Edit/Copy as text menu option.  See reporting for more info on this.

History

Whenever you do a trace to an address, that address gets added to the top of the history list below the address box.  If you re-trace to a site that's already in there, that site will be moved to the top of the list (you can right-click and sort if you want them to show up alphabetically, though).  If you right-click something in the history box, you'll be able to remove it from the list - that lets you keep things clean.

Column Widths

The column widths of the graph are controlled by the width of the program.  If you stretch the size of the program, the DNS Name and the Graph columns will grow to fill the program.

Continuing an aborted trace

If you hit "Stop" for any reason - and then decide you want to pick up from where you left off rather than start over again, you can right-click the "Trace" button and then pick "Restart Trace".  This will just continue on as if you hadn't hit the Stop button.  Note:  If you haven't traced yet OR if you change the trace address, this option won't be available.


Options

This screen is pretty simple right now and pretty much controls the colors on the graph.

The Color HOP column by speed can probably be left on all the time - it marks whether or not the red/yellow/red is painted onto the background of the HOP column.  The colors used should work fine on a 16 color screen, though, so you're probably going to be OK leaving it on.

The background of the graph uses colors that don't display well unless your video drivers are set for more than 256 color.  Turn off the Color graph background option if you're having problems seeing the graph.

The two edit boxes control the point at which the colors change.  In the screen above, all response 200 ms and below will paint green.  From 201 to 500 will paint yellow, and over 500 will paint red.  These numbers apply to both teh HOP column and the graph background.  In addition, the legend on the graph screen will be updated with these number.

You'll probably want to change the numbers based on your internet connection speed.  If you've got a T1 or a cable modem, the listed numbers are probably pretty good (you might move them down a little if you're tracing to a fast site).  If you have a modem, you probably want to crank these numbers up a bit.

A reasonable number for a modem would be 350 for Warning and 600 for Critical.  You might want to play around a little with these, though.

To watch "trending", it's sometimes nice to see what the most recent sample is.  Turn on the Draw X on graph for current sample to do this.  A little blue X will be drawn on the graph that represents the most recent sample.  You might want to turn this off when submitting a picture to an ISP so as not to confuse them or add anything they can question.

If you want to see the NUMBERS as well as the checkmarks (see previous paragraph), then turn on the Show current sample time in grid checkbox.  This will show the most recent hop time along with the average hop time.  Once again, if submitting a picture to an ISP, it might be best to turn this off.

Many times, the first hop in a trace will ALWAYS time out.  This is caused by the local router and does NOT affect your overall response times.  If your first hop always times out, turn on the Ignore first hop checkbox.  This will decrease the load a little bit.


Reporting

Ping Plotter doesn't have any built-in printing options.  What it WILL do for you though is copy its data to the clipboard and you can print it from your favorite program from there.

There are two types of data you can get into the clipboard.

1)  The graph.  Select the Edit/Copy as Image option from the main menu to copy the graph and the legend to the clipboard.  The sizing of this will match exactly what's on the screen, so make sure everything you want printed is displayed.  You can paste this into MSPaint or any other graphics application to print or save.

2)  The raw data.  Select the Edit/Copy as Text option to copy the raw data to the clipboard.  This is copied in a format that's similar to most text-based Trace route programs.  The difference here is that the "Samples to Include" option on the main screen is used to decide how many samples to include in this.  If you're sending a graph to someone trying to show them there's a problem in the network someplace, it's probably a good idea to include this data too.  Just paste this into your e-mail program or whatever.  For best results, use a fixed pitch font (Courier New) like I've done below.

Be careful about including too many samples in this.  I find 5 samples works pretty well - just go to the Samples to include and enter 5 - and then go copy.

Target Name: www.mci.net

         IP: 204.70.133.140

 1   *       *       *       *        []

 2   40 ms   30 ms   20 ms   20 ms   20 ms   akron2.neo.lrun.com [204.210.223.17]

 3   20 ms   20 ms   20 ms   20 ms   30 ms   twcneo-mci.neo.lrun.com [204.210.219.18]

 4   80 ms  350 ms  300 ms  120 ms   90 ms   bordercore2-hssi5-0-2.WillowSprings.mci.net [166.48.22.9]

 5   91 ms  160 ms  150 ms   80 ms  100 ms   core1.Reston.mci.net [204.70.4.229]

 6  101 ms  140 ms  270 ms   70 ms  140 ms     [204.70.176.22]

 7   81 ms  140 ms  190 ms  110 ms  120 ms   fuss1-0.Reston.mci.net [204.70.255.253]

 8  160 ms  190 ms  160 ms   80 ms   90 ms   beauregard.Reston.mci.net [204.70.133.140]


Support

Even though Ping Plotter is freeware, I'm still interested in helping people use it.  If you find any problems with the software, or have any questions (or suggestions!), feel free to drop me some e-mail.

There is a significant amount of help and resources available at www.pingplotter.com.  Although much of the information is about the shareware version, some of it applies to the freeware version as well.  If this help file doesn't answer all your questions, feel free to check on the web site to see if your questions are answered there.

Internet e-mail:

support@pingplotter.com

WWW:

http://www.pingplotter.com/

I also love to hear good things about my software!  If you're using it and like it, drop me a line!

Pete