Oldies, but goodies: shaperprobe (1st), pchar (3rd), tcptrace.org, lft (4th), iftop, nsping (2nd), iperf, sjitter, pathneck (3rd) These are newer -- http://www.internet2.edu/products-services/performance-monitoring/performanc... (OWAMP, 2nd) -- http://paris-traceroute.net (4th) -- http://packetdrill.googlecode.com dre On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 4:33 PM, Ammar Salih <ammar.alsalih@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello NANOG list members,
I have a question for you, are you happy with the current network diagnostic tools, like ping, trace route .. etc, don't you think it's time to have an upgraded version of icmp protocol? from my side there is a lot that I can NOT do with current tools and protocols, here are few scenarios, and I would like to hear yours:
First scenario:
To be able to troubleshoot advanced networks with complex QoS and policy-based routing configuration, where ping, traceroute and other network diagnostic tools do not provide accurate readings, for example, you are troubleshooting a web server with ping, and it looks functioning quite well (packet loss and round trip time is all good), but web services are still significantly slow, the fact is icmp and tcp:80 might have different priorities and bandwidth limits on each router along the path between the client and the server, in this case, network admins usually use telnet applications like (Paping), well it may help if the forward and return path of all packets are exactly the same.
Second scenario:
So another possible scenario is that you need to determine readings for forward and return paths, TraceRoute for example gives you forward path only using icmp. But what if you need to troubleshoot a VoIP server for example, assuming that packets return path might not be the same as forward path.
Third scenario:
One of the most common problems in networking, is that you don't have access to all equipment between client and server, but you have to troubleshoot the path between them and to understand where the problem exactly is in order to contact the right person without having the privilege to check the configuration on each router.
Fourth scenario:
Also, with trace route you can't determine the actual path, for example, the router may direct http traffic to proxy server while leaving other traffic going through a different hop.