Vista - Strangeness in when performing tracert

Hello


First let me start by saying I'm not extremely knowledgable about PCs.

Basically here is my problem:

I am trying to play an online game and can't seem to connect to their server through their access program.

They advise me to run a tracert

on the first hop I get:
1 * * * request timed out

the other 14 hops go through fine. The game company says it's my ISP and my ISP says it's probably on my end, something to do with Vista. I am running straight from my PC to a motorola surfboard 5101 cable modem no router or anything. Any ideas on why my IP would be timing out?

many thanks in advance

Its probably blocking pings. But if the other 14 after that work, its no big deal.

To ping your modem from your computer through a ethernet cable would be about 0.001ms.

I pinged Google from my setup, and over the wireless its <1ms.

The tracert is a strange tool, and I am convinced its very helpful. All I can say is that if a whole conclusive [3] packets time out, that does not mean anything. It is probably not an ISP problem, because it is not a problem at all.

Ping instead of tracert. Say ping -n 50 targetip[or fullqualified domanin name]. If the, say 1st still times out, that is not a problem. Altough 14 hops can take up responstime to a point where connections could time out...

All in all, if the ping goes through, the packets arrive, and response time is not hundreds of ms it should not be a network connectivity issue.

Folks,

When you get "* * *" in parts of a successful tracert, all it means is that particular device is configured to ignore ICMP packets. It's not a problem. What is that device? Is it your local router?

Scott

The number of hops has little to do with response time and 14 hops is not excessive. Overall latency is what effect response time. You can have a 14 hop connection that has 50ms of latency and a 3 hop connection that has 400ms of latency. I'll take the 14 hop connection every time!

Scott

I am fully aware of this. My suggestion was that there can easily be "bottlenecks" if you go through 14 hops [can be a lot of autonomous systems, ISPs, connections, etc.]. Naturally, you are right, overall latency is what counts. That is why I suggested ping, which gives back a time for the whole route.


Thank you,

Well Also you can check on you Vista Firewall as Vista works as a Inbound and Outbound Firewall. what you could do is try using the Advance Firewall in vista and see wheter ICMP is blocked from outbound.

If ICMP was blocked outbound, the tracert would not work at all. The first device in the tracert, whatever it is, is configured to ignore ICMP traffic. That's not uncommon.

Based on the fact that the OP says he connected directly to the cable modem, It is likely a router or layer 3 switch at his cable provider. The fact that their support folks don't understand this does not surprise me in the least.

As PerryMason said, once it is established that a route exists using tracert, ping will provide actual round trip times better. This assumes the host to be pinged is not setup to ignore pings.

If tracert and ping establish that everything seems to be fine in regards to connectivity and latency, and the OP still cannot connect to the game server, I would start to look at port numbers used to see what may be blocked via the Vista firewall. I would turn the firewall off temporarily and try connecting....

S-