novice routing question

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im currently learning about netwroking for the first time and iv been messing about with some basic commands.

when I ran pathping on google (just for something to use) i got 13 steps with almost no problems except a bit of loss between the last 2 routers - presumably due to heavy traffic accessing google?

I say "almost" because at 2 seperate points i got 100% packet loss - does this mean that the packets hit a dead end and were simply re-routed and found a new path that worked each time?

Or does it mean something else?


And on another topic - as i was writting this I got a note saying a network cable is unpluged- local area connection unavaliable etc - as soon as i saw that i pinged my default gateway and sure enough didnt get a responce, I waited a few moments and pinged it again and this time got a good responce, HOWEVER when i try to access a web page i just get a network error page.

This has happened before but iv never really trouleshooted it before - the odd thing is that if i just leave it for a bit, the connection will come back on its own. (no cables have been unpluged or touched the whole time)

Is this likley to be a dodgy cable between me and my router or is it somethign to do with the network provider?

(and yes i did have to wait for connection to return before I posted this :P)

 

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on your first point sounds to me like there was a collision somewhere

on your second point it could be a dodgy cable but more likely (to me anyway) the ISP.

 

The thing to remember with pings/traceroutes is that it uses the ICMP protocol (Internet Control Message Protocol) by sending multiple Echo Request messages from point A to B over a period of time (normally upto the TTL = 30 hops).

This class of traffic is low priority, therefore meaning if the router is busy doing other operations and furfilling its primarily role (routing) it will use all its resources on this operation and if it has time/resource available will/may reply to the ping request, therefore a missing reply in your traceroute does not mean the path is dead - it also could mean that the router may just be blocking ICMP or reply requests.

Becuase of this traceroutes/ping plotters are not the best tool to use for 100% accurancy, but as a guide or to use just to prove connectivity.


In regards to problem 2, yes it could be the cable or the router/switch, does the router to your knowledge ever lose power or overheat or does any other device on your network suffer from this problem, could be faulty switch port or the router...