Live Traceroutes

The live traceroute feature is used in combination with the Network Monitoring Sessions. This means that a monitoring session must be configured between two agents to be able to use this feature. Inside the App, users can go to any network monitoring session page and click the Live Traceroute button to launch the live traceroute feature. Note that a separate live traceroute window (popup) is opened.

Below is a screen capture that shows you how to do it.

In the live traceroute page, there is a button Share Link that can be used to share the page with someone else. People that use the link do not need to have an Obkio account or be logged into the App. The link is valid for 48 hours.

With this sharing feature, it is easy for our users to share the traceroute results with their colleagues, IT consultants but also their service providers’ support team. With access to the live traceroute feature, everyone will be able to troubleshoot network problems as fast as possible. Faster network troubleshooting means faster fix and less pain for the end-users.

Note that the live traceroute is only running if someone has it open. If no one is looking at the traceroute, the traceroute will stop within 5 minutes.

Traffic in IP networks is asymmetrical, meaning that the path used from a source to a destination is probably not the same used from the destination to the source. Network engineers will tell you, when looking at traceroute, you must have a traceroute from both directions. This is exactly what the live traceroute gives you. You can see, in real-time, the traceroute from both directions. We wrote a complete blog post on this: Internet Traffic is Asymmetrical - How to Catch Reverse Path Issues?

When the traceroute is not running, you can change the settings of the traceroute. Refer to the Traceroutes for the setting details.

Traceroute is a powerful tool that is easy to misinterpret and get to false conclusions. This is the main reason why we have spent so much time writing the traceroute series articles to help our users understand the data that traceroutes provide.

A full article about our Live Traceroutes feature is also available on our Blog: Live Traceroutes Feature.