Troubleshoot Network Problems With Ping Plotter

Troubleshoot network problems with Version 1.
0
PingPlotter March 27, 2007
By Scott Lowe
Takeaway
PingPlotter is a lightweight network monitoring and troubleshooting tool. It can run in the background collecting
data while you continue to run applications, and then allow you to quickly look at the data in an intuitive graphical
format when you experience network problems. PingPlotter is great at allowing you to collect data over time to
see trends.
PingPlotter
PingPlotter is a lightweight network monitoring and troubleshooting tool. It can run in the background collecting
data while you continue to run applications, and then allow you to quickly look at the data in an intuitive graphical
format when you experience problems (reduced call quality for VoIP, slowdowns or disconnects with
applications).
PingPlotter is great at allowing you to collect data over time to see trends. Version 2.6 features support for TCP
traceroute and significant improvements in ability to run as a non-administrative user. PingPlotter includes an all
new options dialog and alert e-mail body text that can be customized. You can now enter a time as a "Samples to
Include" and PingPlotter will try and calculate how many samples will equal that time period.
The PingPlotter main window (Figure A) starts out with some default addresses you can trace. Take note of the
Sampling and Statistics section of the screen. The items are fairly self-explanatory and can be adjusted to modify
how often PingPlotter performs traceroutes and to limit how long PingPlotter runs.
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Troubleshoot network problems with PingPlotter
Figure A
PingPlotter main window

By selecting an address and then clicking on the Trace button shown in the previous screen, PingPlotter starts
performing traceroutes and pings in order to determine the health of the route between the system on which
PingPlotter is installed and the selected address.
The entire route is shown in the right-hand side of the window.
There are a number of headings shown in this display:
• Hop: The route hop
• PL%: The percentage of packet loss on a particular hop
• IP: The IP address of the device at the hop
• DNSName: The results of a reverse DNS lookup on the IP address
• Avg: The average ping time for a particular hop
• Cur: The most recent ping results
The graph displays a plethora of information (Figure B). The red line is the map of the current set of pings. The
black line shows the whole range, from minimum to maximum, of pings that have been returned since monitoring
began. The blue "X" is the average ping for a hop.
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Figure B
Traceroutes
If you right-click on a device in the list, you get the shortcut menu shown in Figure C.
Figure C
Right-click for the options menu
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One of the shortcut menu options is the IP Block Lookup (ARIN). PingPlotter polls the ARIN (American Registry
for Internet Numbers) database and returns information about the block of network addresses in use by a
particular device. You can manually specify a different IP address or WhoIs server by changing the values at the
top of the window shown in Figure D.
Figure D
The IP Block Lookup

Another shortcut option allows you to query the WhoIs database for a device somewhere along your ping route.
As is the case with the IP address block lookup, you can manually change the query information at the top of the
screen to get information for other domains.
In Figure B, you saw a single graph at the bottom of the screen. This initial graph corresponds to the last device
along the route. However, you can add graphs for as many hops as you like. Right-click the device/hop and then
choose "Show this Timeline Graph." from the shortcut menu. This view (Figure E) can be useful if you need to
watch interaction between more than one hop.
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Figure E
Timeline Graph
By default, PingPlotter displays graphing information on a 10 minute scale. Whether you have very little
information or whether you have a whole lot of information, PingPlotter gives you a way to change the graph scale
so you can get a look at the information in a way that makes sense for you.
When you're troubleshooting a problem, you sometimes need to make note of a particular anomaly so you can
check up on it later. By right-clicking the graph at the time of a particularly interesting event and choosing Create
Comment, you can add a comment to your graph.
Take a look at the graphs at the bottom of Figure F. Each graph has a little red triangle pointing to a spot along
the timeline. By hovering the mouse over that triangle you can reveal the any added comments.
Figure F
Reading comments
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You can stop and start the plotting process at any time for any of your addresses. When you do stop plotting for
an address and then start it back up, a gap appears in the graph.
One area that can get tricky when it comes to troubleshooting is a seemingly random change to the route. When I
pointed PingPlotter at my personal Web server, which is hosted, I started to see a huge number of routing
changes. As you might expect, constant changes to the route being used can pretty much kill the process of
gathering useful statistical information. PingPlotter lets you know every time a route change takes place. (Figure
G). According to the PingPlotter site:
"Route changes are a pretty normal fact of life with the Internet. It sometimes happens for load balancing reasons,
sometimes to route your data around problem areas, or a number of other possible reasons."
Figure G
Route changes
Adjust settings
From Edit | Options, choose Display in order to see and modify PingPlotter's display settings. From here you can,
for example, change the graph scales in order to get a different look at your data. Or, if you want to use different
default lookup servers or configure a proxy server, visit the Internet settings page on the Options screen instead
(Figure H).
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Figure H
Internet settings
From the Edit menu, choose the E-mail Setup option to open the window shown in Figure I. Here, specify the
pertinent information for your SMTP server in order to receive e-mail alerts when your plotted services go outside
of defined bounds.
Figure I
E-mail Setup options
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With your SMTP server configured, you can configure one or more alerts that notify you in a variety of ways that
the results of a plotted address have exceeded a specified boundary (Figure J). The possible event options are:
• Send an email
• Launch an executable
• Play a sound
• Log to a file
• Tray icon change
You can configure multiple events to take place. In addition to defining a condition and event, you will also need to
select a target. Click the Show Targets button and provide the IP address for the device that is to be monitored.
Figure J
Configure alerts
Of course sometimes you just don't have the time to sit and analyze the results of your work. That's why
PingPlotter provides you with a way to export all of the raw data into a CSV file that you can import into Excel.
Review
PingPlotter is an interesting product. The company provides three versions of the software:
• The freeware version is pretty limited but has no cost attached to it.
• The Standard version is a little beefier, but still only supports tracing to a single target per instance.
• Only the Pro version can handle multiple traces simultaneously. It has features to specifically watch for
problems that could affect VoIP quality. The Pro version also allows remote administration via a Web
management interface and a whole lot more.
The Standard edition starts at $24.95 for a single license while the Pro edition runs $199.95 for a single user.
However, quantity discounts are available.
For a free troubleshooting tool, I can definitely see the upside of using Ping Plotter to track down network
problems. The examples I used here were all Internet-based, but the value of this tool in a local network
environment could be significant if it helps to nail down network performance problems. At $199.95 for a single
Pro license, PingPlotter isn't exactly inexpensive, but the Pro edition does support running as a Windows service,
performing multiple target tracing, gathering Jitter/Standard Deviation/MOS data, and a lot more.
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Version history
Version: 1.0
Published: March 27, 2007
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Troubleshoot network problems with Version 1.

PingPlotter main window

Right-click for the options menu

The IP Block Lookup

E-mail Setup options

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