How to run a traceroute

There are two pieces of information that can greatly help us determine why your pages are running slower than normal on GoldToken. A traceroute and a ping. Traceroute can identify problematic hops, but end to end round trip time is the most important metric, which is measured by ping. It may feel overwhelming to run a ping or traceroute, but really, they are very simple to do, and you will be quite tickled with yourself once you have so easily mastered this new ability!

How to run a traceroute

The traceroute utility on your computer checks how many "hops" (transfers through other computers on a network) it takes for your computer to contact another computer. Running a traceroute can greatly help us to identify if there is a traffic jam somewhere along your connection, causing your page load speed to crawl. This traceroute will also specificaly identify if your slow pages are caused on GoldToken's end.

To access the Windows utility:

1. Open the command prompt:

• Windows 7 or Vista: From the Start menu, in the search field, type cmd, and then press Enter.
• Previous versions: From the Start menu, select Run... . In the "Open:" box, type cmd, and then press Enter.

2. At the command prompt, enter tracert www.goldtoken.com >%userprofile%\desktop\trace.txt and hit the Enter key.

• You should see something similar to the following:

Tracing route to goldtoken.com [216.240.153.177]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

 1     3 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.42.129 
 2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 3    37 ms    39 ms    48 ms  59.sub-69-83-165.myvzw.com [69.83.165.59] 
 4    47 ms    41 ms    47 ms  113.sub-69-83-168.myvzw.com [69.83.168.113] 
 5    56 ms    48 ms    42 ms  3.sub-69-83-165.myvzw.com [69.83.165.3] 
 6    52 ms    41 ms    39 ms  137.sub-66-174-29.myvzw.com [66.174.29.137] 
 7    42 ms    52 ms    53 ms  TenGigE0-0-1-0.GW5.SCL2.ALTER.NET [152.179.67.5] 
 8    89 ms    62 ms    33 ms  0.ge-2-0-0.XT1.SCL2.ALTER.NET [152.63.56.37] 
 9    39 ms    40 ms    48 ms  0.so-5-1-0.XL3.SJC7.ALTER.NET [152.63.0.150] 
10    49 ms    46 ms    49 ms  0.ae3.BR3.SJC7.ALTER.NET [152.63.50.5] 
11    41 ms    39 ms    39 ms  te4-3.mpd01.sjc03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.12.169] 
12    51 ms    50 ms    49 ms  te2-2.mpd01.sjc01.atlas.cogentco.com [66.28.4.73] 
13    65 ms    60 ms    50 ms  te0-2-0-1.ccr21.lax01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.5.186] 
14    65 ms    50 ms    57 ms  te4-4.ccr02.lax04.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.1.10] 
15    66 ms    51 ms    50 ms  38.104.83.210 
16    56 ms    49 ms    57 ms  lux.calpop.com [64.27.16.131] 
17    64 ms    52 ms    48 ms  sisyphus.goldtoken.com [216.240.153.177] 

Trace complete.

Using the above tracert goldtoken.com > test.txt command, the file will automatically be saved according to your computers set up. To find it (if not saved on your desktop), click the Start menu again, type test.txt in the search field and hit Enter, or look for it directly under C:\Users\owner.

3. Once you have the txt file (it can be found on your desk top), copy and paste in a message to GoldToken Support. Important note: Be sure to save the text.txt information before running a ping as noted below or your traceroute information will be overwritten.

A little explanation of what the traceroute shows: Each number displays a hop from one router to the next (the "hop count") and represents the number of stops your trace has made along the route to attempt to contact GoldToken's servers. Within each trace are three different round-trip page tests that denote the amount of time in milliseconds (seen as "ms" in the list - a millisecond 1000th of a second), it took your connection to reach that router, followed by the routers ID and IP. GoldToken's server name that you connect to is sisyphus, the final destination in your traceroute.


Since there is a "Request timed out" message on the second hop in the example traceroute, you might guess that there could be a problem between the first hop, the 192.168.42.129 network and the third hop, the myvzw.com network. If you are seeing similar problems, such as a GoldToken page loading slower than normal, this could indicate the location of the problem.

How to Ping

Pinging is a computer command that tells you if the connection between your computer and a particular domain is working correctly.


1. Open the command prompt:

• Windows 7 or Vista: From the Start menu, in the search field, type cmd, and then press Enter.
• Previous versions: From the Start menu, select Run... . In the "Open:" box, type cmd, and then press Enter.

2. At the command prompt, enter ping goldtoken.com and hit the Enter key

• You should see something similar to the following:

Pinging goldtoken.com [216.240.153.177] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.240.153.177: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=49
Reply from 216.240.153.177: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=49
Reply from 216.240.153.177: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=49
Reply from 216.240.153.177: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=49

Ping statistics for 216.240.153.177:
   Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
   Minimum = 52ms, Maximum = 62ms, Average = 54ms

Using the above ping goldtoken.com > test.txt command, the file will automatically be saved according to your computers set up. To find it (if not saved on your desktop), click the Start menu again, type test.txt in the search field and hit Enter, or look for it directly under C:\Users\owner.

3. Once you have the txt file, add it to your copy and paste message to GoldToken Support, and send.

If the results show a series of replies, the connection is working. The time shows you how fast the connection is. If you see a "timed out" error instead of a reply, there is a breakdown somewhere between your computer and GoldToken.

---

For those not able to run a traceroute or ping, there is a service offered at http://networktools.nl/ that can run a trace or ping for you, however, it runs it from the Netherlands, and not your ISP service. This will only verify service interruptions with GoldToken from IP 188.138.112.3 and not note if your ISP is the source of the problem or if there is a problem between your service and GoldToken's. Please let us know if this is how you ran your trace or ping.


To utilize a trace or ping using http://networktools.nl/, click on the trace or ping option, and type GoldToken.com in the text box provided, and click Go. Once you have the trace or ping, please copy and paste it in a message to GoldToken Support, so they can help identify any problems on our end.