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What can I do when a ping times out whilst en route to its destination?
I have contacted the last IP address listed in the trace and they say it is timing out after it leaves their server.
I can't find out who owns the next server.
How do I resolve this?
Vaughan Chetwynd
Posted 2012-04-21T20:26:52.823
Reputation: 11
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Simply put, not a lot!
ICMP Echo / Ping is one of the most basic network diagnostic tools out there, but can be hard to diagnose.... The most common cause of a time out is is simply that the target is blocking it in their firewall, or just configured servers not to respond.
If you are trying to diagnose something specific, I highly recommend you use some alternative tools. If you are using Windows, I recommend looking at both tracert and pathping which are both excellent networking tools.
William Hilsum
Posted 2012-04-21T20:26:52.823
Reputation: 111 572
pathping is indeed the tool to figure out where your pings drop. – Tamara Wijsman – 2012-04-21T21:13:43.467
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If it responds nothing to ping it says to you "none of your business, go away"
ZaB
Posted 2012-04-21T20:26:52.823
Reputation: 2 365
Exactly. Unless you have some agrement with the administrators of the destination machine or network to provide you with a ping reply service, they have no obligation to provide you with such a service. It should be no surprise that they don't provide a service they don't offer. – David Schwartz – 2012-04-21T21:46:59.360
3Diagnosing network problems is a skill that can't be explained in a few paragraphs. Are you sure this destination is supposed to respond to pings? – David Schwartz – 2012-04-21T20:38:41.887
@TomWijsman: I'm asking if the destination is supposed to respond to pings (as seen from the Internet). He's saying that the pings are leaving the last IP address listed in the trace. The behavior he is seeing is perfectly consistent with a destination host (or destination network) that does not respond to pings. – David Schwartz – 2012-04-21T21:45:59.283
@TomWijsman You've misunderstood the question. The packets are leaving the last IP address listed in the trace and continuing towards their destination. There's no evidence they're reaching the destination. – David Schwartz – 2012-04-22T20:25:09.140
@TomWijsman The last IP address listed in the trace isn't the destination. There's no evidence to suggest any packets reached the destination. – David Schwartz – 2012-04-22T22:16:15.210
@DavidSchwartz: The last IP in a trace is always the destination, else it wouldn't be a trace. The next server is that on the route back. There is no evidence that the destination is not receiving the packets, which is why he contacted the last IP address to verify. In any case, both ends have to perform a
pathpingto verify which hops are exactly the problem and contact those. Randomly contacting hops in between does not make much sense. And well, if an intermediary hop doesn't answer then it's probably for a reason. Let's wait for more detail from Vaughan... – Tamara Wijsman – 2012-04-22T22:39:52.577@TomWijsman: Umm, no. Not at all. If you don't see why, consider a trace to a destination IP address that isn't assigned to any machine. There must be some last IP in the trace, but it cannot be the destination. All of your reasoning proceeds from this false assumption that the last IP address in the trace must be the destination. (And under your interpretation, what is the OP referring to by the "next server"?) – David Schwartz – 2012-04-22T22:46:31.617
@TomWijsman: You've completely misunderstood this question. I'm not sure how I can make it any clearer than I have. He is trying to troubleshoot a trace that doesn't get to the destination. Hence "times out whilst en route to its destination". I'm not sure why you've decided that it's the rare and complicated case of a ping reply not getting back to him, but nothing in the question suggests that and the question itself confirms that's not the case. – David Schwartz – 2012-04-22T23:02:35.293
@DavidSchwartz: As I told you, to exclude assumptions:
let's wait for more detail from Vaughan– Tamara Wijsman – 2012-04-22T23:03:24.387