could someone explain to me why I can ping but traceroute seems to have problem reaching it.
The combination of a firewall (permitting ICMP echo replies/requests, but filtering your UDP traceroute probes) .. and a traceroute client that doesn't correctly handle (IMO) the response (ICMP Type 3, Code 13: Communication Administratively Prohibited). Many traceroute clients (i.e. ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/traceroute.tar.Z) better indicate things of this nature: danny@ice% traceroute auth3.ipass.com traceroute: Warning: Multiple interfaces found; using 204.74.125.252 @ eb0 traceroute to ren.iPass.COM (167.216.128.232), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 fe0-2.hopper.genuity.net (207.240.3.254) 0.883 ms 0.728 ms 2.731 ms 2 fe11-1.border1.phx1.genuity.net (207.240.103.189) 1.894 ms 13.040 ms 1.377 ms 3 fe-6-0.core1.phx1.genuity.net (207.240.1.1) 1.500 ms 69.045 ms 3.208 ms 4 core1.sjc1.genuity.net (207.240.0.9) 20.429 ms 18.507 ms 18.123 ms 5 207.240.24.178 (207.240.24.178) 20.624 ms 19.139 ms 17.908 ms 6 sanjose1-nbr1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.3.189) 19.179 ms 20.695 ms 20.093 ms 7 su-bfr.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.1) 20.322 ms 23.264 ms 26.579 ms 8 paloalto-cr8.bbnplanet.net (4.0.2.210) 26.441 ms 41.758 ms 50.069 ms 9 digitisland.bbnplanet.net (131.119.35.82) 84.241 ms 77.681 ms 84.923 ms 10 digitisland.bbnplanet.net (131.119.35.82) 129.785 ms !X * 152.450 ms !X -danny
i.e. ping -s auth3.ipass.com. 64 bytes from holmes.ipass.com (204.198.128.102): icmp_seq=0. time=352. ms
yet traceroute
... 6 s2/2-decker-hi.digisle.net (167.216.156.57) 147 ms 149 ms 148 ms 7 s2/2-decker-hi.digisle.net (167.216.156.57) 205 ms * 147 ms 8 * s2/2-decker-hi.digisle.net (167.216.156.57) 152 ms * 9 s2/2-decker-hi.digisle.net (167.216.156.57) 148 ms * 159 ms 10 * s2/2-decker-hi.digisle.net (167.216.156.57) 148 ms * 11 s2/2-decker-hi.digisle.net (167.216.156.57) 177 ms * 161 ms ...
thnx in adv.