If you're experiencing timeouts or intermittent connectivity issues or dropped packets to one of our servers, the best way to diagnose this issue is by using a utility called "MTR" which is like a combination of ping and traceroute in one. It maps all nodes between your location and our server then repeatedly pings them to help pinpoint which one(s) are having difficulty.
To get started download and install the matching utility for your OS:
- Windows: http://winmtr.net
- Mac: http://macappstore.org/mtr/
- Linux: simply use your package manager to install mtr, like yum install mtr, or apt-get install mtr. On Fedora/RHEL/CentOS you may require the epel repository: yum install mtr --enablerepo=epel
Note: On Linux or macOS you may need to sudo to operate the utility.
Once downloaded and installed, you must wait until the intermittent issue occurs next, then while the issue is happening, run the following command and leave it running for about 1-5 minutes, or until the intermittent problem stops occurring. Please ensure to stop it from continuing to run if the intermittent issue stops occurring, as the data it produces will not be useful during a working connection and will serve to skew the results.
If you have seen a traceroute output before, you might now be able to guess which node between you and the server is failing to respond as expected. If not, then copy and paste the results into a text file and attach it to either your existing ticket, or a new one if you don't yet have one.
Here's a couple example of how to run it (be sure to replace the server hostname with your actual server hostname or IP address):mtr basil.websavers.casudo mtr basil.websavers.ca
That will get you a report of approximate network health between your computer and our server called Basil.
