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Network Diagnostics

In this section, we'll review some basic commands that will help you assess and diagnose network problems. If you suspect connectivity issues, adding the output from the relevant commands to your support ticket can help our staff diagnose your issue. This is particularly helpful in cases where networking issues are intermittent.

TL;DR​

First try ping to our hosts. If you need support for network issues, The best way we can help is when you would send us the result ot the traceroute / mtr report as described below, which is helpful information about your local network connectivity. Basically these commands measure the time it takes to send internet packets from your device.

Please send us the results of the following commands

"mtr -r bintu-stream.nanocosmos.de"

and

"mtr -r bintu-play.nanocosmos.de"

or

"ping bintu-stream.nanocosmos.de"

and

"ping bintu-play.nanocosmos.de"

You can also directly connect to specific geo locations, see our support document.

Adding ping, mtr or traceroute output to support tickets is sometimes useful when trying to diagnose network issues. You may also want to forward traceroute information to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) if you suspect that the connectivity issue is with your ISP's network. Recording traceroute information is particularly useful if you are experiencing an intermittent issue.

IP Addresses​

The ping Command​

The ping command tests the connection between the local machine and a remote address or machine. The ping program is installed by default on just about every operating system, Linux, MacOS, and Windows, so you do not need to install it. It runs from the command line.

The following commands "ping" google.com :

ping google.com

Instead google.com you should use any of the nanocosmos host names like mentioned above.

These commands send a small amount of data (an ICMP packet) to the remote host and wait for a response. If the system is able to make a connection, it will report on the "round trip time" for every packet.
Here is the sample output of four pings to google.com:

PING google.com (216.58.217.110): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 216.58.217.110: icmp_seq=0 ttl=54 time=14.8 ms
64 bytes from 216.58.217.110: icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=16.6 ms
64 bytes from 216.58.217.110: icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=16.5 ms

The time field specifies in milliseconds the duration of the round trip for an individual packet. You can use Control+C to interrupt the process. You'll be presented with some statistics once the process is stopped. This will resemble:

--- google.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3007ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 33.890/40.175/53.280/7.679 ms

There are several important data points to notice:

  • Packet Loss, or the discrepancy between the number of packets sent and the number of packets that return successfully. This number shows the percentage of packets that are dropped.
  • Round Trip Time (rtt) statistics on the final line report information about all the ping responses. For this ping we see that the fastest packet round trip (min) took 16.5 milliseconds. The average round trip (avg) took 40.175 milliseconds. The longest packet (max) took 53.28 milliseconds. A single standard deviation unit (mdev) for these four packets is 7.67 milliseconds.

The ping command is useful as an informal diagnostic tool to measure point-to-point network latency, and as a tool to simply ensure you are able to make a connection to a remote server.

The traceroute Command​

The traceroute command expands on the functionality of the ping command. It is also part of every operating system, Linux, MacOS, and Windows (where it is called tracert).

It provides a report on the path that the packets take to get from the local machine to the remote machine. Each step (intermediate server) in the path is called a hop. This information is useful when troubleshooting a networking issue: if there is packet loss in one of the first few hops the problem is often related to the user's local area network (LAN) or Internet service provider (ISP). By contrast, if there is packet loss near the end of the route, the problem may be caused by an issue with the server's connection.

Here is an example of output from a traceroute command:

traceroute to google.com (74.125.53.100), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 207.192.75.2 (207.192.75.2) 0.414 ms 0.428 ms 0.509 ms
2 vlan804.tbr2.mmu.nac.net (209.123.10.13) 0.287 ms 0.324 ms 0.397 ms
3 0.e1-1.tbr2.tl9.nac.net (209.123.10.78) 1.331 ms 1.402 ms 1.477 ms
4 209.85.250.144 (209.85.250.144) 86.025 ms 86.151 ms 86.136 ms
5 64.233.174.131 (64.233.174.131) 80.877 ms 216.239.48.34 (216.239.48.34) 76.212 ms 64.233.174.131 (64.233.174.131) 80.884 ms
6 216.239.48.32 (216.239.48.32) 81.267 ms 81.198 ms 81.186 ms
7 216.239.48.137 (216.239.48.137) 77.478 ms pw-in-f100.1e100.net (74.125.53.100) 79.009 ms 216.239.48.137 (216.239.48.137) 77.437 ms

Often the hostnames and IP addresses on either side of a failed jump are useful in determining who operates the machine where the routing error occurs. Failed jumps are designated by lines with three asterisks (* * *).

The mtr Command​

The mtr command, like the traceroute tool, provides information about the route that internet traffic takes between the local system and a remote host. However, mtr provides additional information about the round trip time for the packet. In a way, you can think of mtr as a combination of traceroute and ping. Usually mtr is not installed by default on all operating systems, so you might need to download and install it first.

Here is an example of output from an mtr command:

HOST: google.com                        Loss%   Snt     Last    Avg     Best    Wrst    StDev
    1.  256.129.75.4                    0.0%    10      0.4     0.4     0.3     0.6     0.1
    2.  vlan804.tbr2.mmu.nac.net        0.0%    10      0.3     0.4     0.3     0.7     0.1
    3.  209.85.251.9                    0.0%    10      23.1    35.9    22.6    95.2    27.6
    4.  72.14.239.127                   0.0%    10      24.2    24.8    23.7    26.1    1.0
    5.  209.85.255.190                  0.0%    10      27.0    27.3    23.9    37.9    4.2
    6.  gw-in-f100.1e100.net            0.0%    10      24.1    24.4    24.0    26.5    0.7

Like the ping command, mtr tracks the speed of the connection in real time until you exit the program with CONTROL+C. To have mtr stop automatically and generate a report after ten packets, use the --report flag:

mtr --report google.com

Be aware that mtr will pause for a few moments while generating output.

For more information regarding mtr consider our diagnosing network issues with mtr guide.

The dig command​

Our cloud service is based on worldwide geo-loadbalanced hosts. To check the correct host resolution from DNS, you can use the "dig" command:

dig bintu-play.nanocosmos.de

Example result:

; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> bintu-play.nanocosmos.de
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;bintu-play.nanocosmos.de.  IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
bintu-play.nanocosmos.de. 30    IN  CNAME   bintu-play.cdn.nanocosmos.de.
bintu-play.cdn.nanocosmos.de. 10 IN CNAME   play.out-a.nanocosmos.de.
play.out-a.nanocosmos.de. 30    IN  CNAME   eu.out-a.nanocosmos.de.
eu.out-a.nanocosmos.de. 30  IN  CNAME   edge-eu-ams-vubm-t2a-01.out-a.nanocosmos.de.
edge-eu-ams-vubm-t2a-01.out-a.nanocosmos.de. 30 IN A 209.250.245.22

;; Query time: 12 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.178.1#53(192.168.178.1)

Sharing results​

You may send your results via our support form or paste it into a hosting service like https://paste.ubuntu.com or https://gist.github.com/

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