Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : How to read traceroute info

[seodevhead]

Hey guys... I need to buy a dedicated server and I was thinking about going with either Liquidweb or Rackspace. I really want my website to move quickly thru the pages and I was told by a friend to do a traceroute of each host. Here is what I found. How do I read this data and what does it mean? I tested a lot of different hosting companies domains and Liquid web had high (ms). Is this bad? I look forward to your input.

TraceRoute to 209.59.139.21 [liquidweb.com]

Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name
1 0 0 0 66.98.244.1 gphou-66-98-244-1.ev1.net
2 0 0 0 66.98.241.3 gphou-66-98-241-3.ev1.net
3 1 0 0 66.98.240.5 gphou-66-98-240-5.ev1.net
4 1 1 1 129.250.10.189 ge-2-0-0.r02.hstntx01.us.bb.verio.net
5 10 8 8 129.250.5.100 p16-0-3-0.r21.dllstx09.us.bb.verio.net
6 8 8 8 129.250.3.29 p16-2-0-0.r00.dllstx09.us.bb.verio.net
7 10 10 9 204.255.174.229 0.so-0-1-0.br6.dfw9.alter.net
8 10 9 10 152.63.97.57 0.so-1-0-0.xl1.dfw9.alter.net
9 32 32 33 152.63.68.90 0.so-7-0-0.xl2.chi2.alter.net
10 32 33 32 152.63.69.161 pos6-0.gw9.chi2.alter.net
11 40 40 40 65.207.234.198 liquidweboc12-gw.customer.alter.net
12 42 40 40 209.59.157.34 lw-core2-ge2.liquidweb.com
13 41 41 41 209.59.157.14 lw-dist1-ge2.liquidweb.com
14 41 40 41 209.59.139.21 liquidweb.com

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TraceRoute to 64.39.2.185 [rackspace.com]

Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name
1 0 0 0 66.98.244.1 gphou-66-98-244-1.ev1.net
2 0 0 0 66.98.241.7 gphou-66-98-241-7.ev1.net
3 0 0 0 66.98.240.4 gphou-66-98-240-4.ev1.net
4 1 1 1 129.250.10.105 ge-0-1-0-50.r00.hstntx01.us.bb.verio.net
5 7 7 6 129.250.2.50 p16-0-1-3.r20.dllstx09.us.bb.verio.net
6 8 7 7 129.250.3.21 p16-0-0-0.r00.dllstx09.us.bb.verio.net
7 8 8 7 129.250.9.82 p4-0.qwest.dllstx09.us.bb.verio.net
8 8 7 8 205.171.25.45 dal-core-01.inet.qwest.net
9 Timed out Timed out Timed out -
10 12 12 13 205.171.31.46 iah-edge-01.inet.qwest.net
11 18 18 18 63.237.96.154 -
12 11 12 11 64.39.2.33 vl130.core1.sat.rackspace.com
13 11 11 11 64.39.2.66 vl901.aggr1.sat.rackspace.com
14 11 11 14 64.39.2.185 cirrus.rackspace.com

[dkitchen]

The "hops" are the number of routers between you and your destination. The lower the number of these, the better.

The three numbers are three "ICMP" requests sent to each router along the way showing the time in miliseconds it takes for them to respond. Obviously the lower the better.

Remember the times shown are from where you are tracing from and where you are tracing to, this is generally a distance related thing - so you might want to trace from multiple locations.