Use PingPlotter to troubleshoot network slowdowns

If you’re on a Windows machine, and your website appears to be running slow. You can try out the PingPlotter application to help pinpoint any problems with network connectivity.

We have a guide on running a ping and traceroute test when you feel your website is running slow. However when you use the PingPlotter application, you’ll be able to get a much better view on possible networking problems.

Install and run a trace with PingPlotter

The steps below will walk you through downloading PingPlotter, and then starting a trace with it to troubleshoot possible network connectivity issues.

1. Download PingPlotter from their website.

2. 

   It’s recommended to download PingPlotter Standard for more features, and you’d click on the HTTP link to begin your download.

   There is also the PingPlotter Freeware edition available that lacks some of the features such as a graph over time, but it’s free.
3. 

   After installing, click on the Launch PingPlotter Standard Now button to launch the application.
4. 

   Now you can click on Continue to bypass the welcome screen, or click on any of the links for more details.
5. 

   By default PingPlotter will already come with some defaults typed in that can help you troubleshoot if you’re just having general network connectivity issues.

   

   Here you can see I’ve made a few adjustments:

   Address to Trace: example.com

   Sampling – # of times to trace 10

   Sampling – Trace Interval 15 seconds

   Statistics – Samples to include 10

   Then click on Trace to begin the test.
6. 

   In this case we did 10 traces with a 15 seconds interval in-between them. So you’ll see that PingPlotter graphs the response we’re getting on each interation.

   We can see from this test that hop 5 is experincing some packet-loss. But overall we are averaging around a 8ms round-trip response time.

   

   Finally at the end, we’re left with the results of the whole test, and in this case we can clearly see that hop 5 with the IP address of 68.1.4.246 is encountering an average of 22.28% packet-loss.

   So if my website seemed to be responding slow at this time, this could possibly be the culprit.
7. 

   Now that we know which IP address seems to possibly be affecting our network performance, we can go over to ARIN.net who is in charge of IP address assignments, and use their SEARCH Whois function at the top-right of the page.

   In this case we can see this router belongs to Cox Communications out of Atlanta, GA. So they might temporarily be having some issues affecting the connection between my local computer and the server.

   In this case because the network connectivity issue doesn’t reside within a network that InMotion Hosting has any control over, contacting us regarding the network slowness won’t help resolve the issue.

   These types of routing issues are typically temporary as the Internet can find multiple routes for a connection to go through. Using PingPlotter can help you keep tabs on just how frequently these issues are happening, and if any further investigation should be done.