Pathping: Traceroute with Packet Loss and Latency Reporting

Contributed by davak October 6, 2005  
Tagged: Windows

One of the most overlooking tools from the windows command line. Pathping gives the user a ton of information at once.

Pathping is basically a traceroute with the estimation of packet loss and latency along each step. If you have a router along the line that is slowly everything down, this tool is your gem.

After performing the traceroute, there is a calculation of the response from each step in the chain. That way you can see the weakest link in the chain.

The quickest way to get information is hitting the following from the command line:
pathping yourserver.com

Replace yourserver.com with the server to which you are having problems connecting. The syntax for the rest of the command is the following:

Usage: pathping [-g host-list] [-h maximum_hops] [-i address] [-n]
[-p period] [-q num_queries] [-w timeout] [-P] [-R] [-T]
[-4] [-6] target_name
Options:

-g host-list Loose source route along host-list.
-h maximum_hops Maximum number of hops to search for target.
-i address Use the specified source address.
-n Do not resolve addresses to hostnames.
-p period Wait period milliseconds between pings.
-q num_queries Number of queries per hop.
-w timeout Wait timeout milliseconds for each reply.
-P Test for RSVP PATH connectivity.
-R Test if each hop is RSVP aware.
-T Test connectivity to each hop with Layer-2 priority tags.
-4 Force using IPv4.
-6 Force using IPv6.