Differing packetloss results from Winmtr, VisualRoute & Pingplotter. Why?

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AllenG

441 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 83428 16-May-2011 20:37

Hi.

I have been using winmtr for testing for packet loss and even though the backhaul has just been upgraded at my exchange am still seeing up to 15% packet loss with winmtr reports.

If I use visualroute or pingplotter I see way less losses. They are all tracerouting to the same IP address.

Can someone explain why the results are so different? I would assume they all test using "standard" icmp ping packets? or do some of them use different packet types for testing packet loss?

In the following tests taken one after the other, Winmtr results show up to 14% loss while Pingplotter shows 1%

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 192.168.1.1 - 0 | 140 | 140 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| ip-58-28-15-31.wxnz.net - 12 | 96 | 85 | 48 | 51 | 71 | 51 |
| ip-58-28-13-131.wxnz.net - 9 | 104 | 95 | 48 | 51 | 68 | 48 |
| ip-58-28-16-1.wxnz.net - 14 | 92 | 80 | 48 | 52 | 90 | 51 |
| ge-0-0-2-232.akl-ip04.wxnz.net - 12 | 96 | 85 | 0 | 54 | 61 | 54 |
| northnet.net.nz - 9 | 104 | 95 | 49 | 52 | 65 | 50 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

Regards Allen.

richms

22920 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Subscriber

# 469871 16-May-2011 21:00

What are they sending to do the trace? Not all IP types will have the same priority in the gear that it goes thru, so unless they are all sending the exact same thing, their results are not comparable.

Richard rich.ms

AllenG

441 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 469880 16-May-2011 21:26

The pingplotter software uses icmp packets of 56 bytes by default. I've downloaded the Pro 30 day trial version, but trying the other packet types (UDP, TCP) fails with 100% loss or unreachable? Not sure what packet type winmtr uses, but is 64 bytes by default. I would assume it was icmp as well?

Wikipedia says this about mtr. "MTR probes routers on the route path by limiting the number of hops individual packets may traverse, and listening to responses of their expiry."
"MTR relies on ICMP Time Exceeded (type 11) packets coming back from routers, or ICMP Echo Reply packets when the packets have hit their destination host."

Not sure how that compares to pingplotter? Maybe Pingplotter is pinging each individual node in the path directly?

Allen.

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