[32569] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Traceroute versus other performance measurement
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark Borchers)
Wed Nov 29 11:04:21 2000
Message-ID: <CA47B6D616C0D211B92E0008C7C5657C08528810@hscmpxsrvcl01>
From: Mark Borchers <mborchers@splitrock.net>
To: "'nanog@merit.edu'" <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 10:02:20 -0600
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Presumably you're asking if it's a good tool to measure
*available* bandwidth or lack thereof, i.e. congestion and
its byproducts of packet loss and increased latency.
No, it isn't!
- Congestion resulting from asymmetric paths can be misinterpreted
through traceroute.
- Cases where ICMP performance with respect to the routers
themselves is significantly lower than throughput of
production traffic will often skew results.
Having said that, where traceroutes suggest a POSSIBLE problem
on my own network, I'd check further. However, I would never
ask the operator of another network to troubleshoot solely on
the basis of traceroute output.
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Paul Bradford [mailto:paul@adelphia.net]
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 9:08 AM
> > To: nanog@merit.edu
> > Subject: Traceroute versus other performance measurement
> >
> > I need help with a reality/sanity check. Traceroute is a
> > good tool for
> > checking for routing type problems (loops). Does anyone feel
> > it's a good tool
> > to use for testing "bandwidth"....
>
