Find the average RTT with the asterisks

Question

These two pictures present the results after running a tracerout I want to find the AVG RTT for each line but dont know the value of the asterisks should I put a zero and then find the avg of all of them or ignore it and find the avg depending that I have? and in case there is three of them how do I deal with it?

Answer 1

Each asterisk means "no response received", so the RTT for that probe is infinity, not zero.

In the first case, it makes the most sense to ignore it and calculate average of {4 ms; 3 ms} only.

(Note: The packet loss might indicate unreliable network, but it also might be completely normal, as many routers put strict rate-limits on how often they'll send out the ICMP responses. It depends on what the last hop results look like.)

In the second case, it's impossible to calculate the RTT since you didn't receive any responses at all, so all you can do is mark it as "∞ ms" or "N/A" or something.