Catchpoint's Network Path Chart provides an extra level of details about each hop in the path to the remote host you are monitoring.
This chart is also displayed for all waterfalls for tests that include a traceroute. This includes:
- Scheduled Traceroute tests
- Instant Traceroute tests
- All tests that have Additional Monitor: Traceroute (ICMP|UDP|TCP) enabled.
- All tests that have Debug (Primary|Referenced) Host on Failure enabled.
The chart displays the path between the source (node) and destination. The chart displays a list of the hops (routers) between the two. The hops are grouped together, or collapsed, based on the information available. The grouping can be done by:
- ASN (Autonomous System Number) (default)
- Country
- City
The grouping / collapsing on the chart is done for consecutive hops belonging to the same ASN/Country/City. For example:
AS1 >> AS2 >> AS2 >> AS2 >> AS3 >> AS4 >> AS2 >> AS5
The chart displays the hops as rounded rectangles connected by dotted or continuous lines, as in this screenshot:
The above example would actually be displayed in the below format by default:
AS1 >> AS2... >> AS3 >> AS4 >> AS2 >> AS5
The color of the hop glyph indicates the following:
- Grey: Source / destination hops. (Not necessarily the end hop, because the last hop may not be the destination.)
- Blue: A normal hop.
- White: A hop with no information (If no IP address or any other information is available, it is commonly displayed with ***)
- Red: A dead hop, meaning it was the last hop in the traceroute, but was not the destination; this indicates the traceroute failed to reach the destination.
The first hop is never collapsed, but subsequent hops can be collapsed together to a single glyph if they belong to the same group (ASN, City, or Country).
The last hop can be the destination, displayed in Grey, or dead hop, displayed in Red. In either case, it is never collapsed.
Example:
**AS1 >> AS2 >> AS2 >> AS2 >> AS3 >> AS4 >> AS2 >> AS5 >> AS5 >> AS5 **
In the above, notice that the ASN number for the last hops are the same, so the last hop would be displayed as below:
AS1 >> AS2... >> AS3 >> AS4 >> AS2 >> AS5 ... >> AS5
The hop, by default, displays the information the hops are grouped by. If grouped by ASN, it displays the AS number. If grouped by City, it displays the name of the City.
The hops also display a circle with the packet loss rate, if the packet loss is equal to or greater than 1%.
For the destination hop, we also display the average latency (ms) to the destination in a purple circle.
When you hover your curser over a hop, a hovercard is displayed which contains the following information:
- Round Trip Time (ms)
- Packet Loss (%)
- Hostname
- ASN
- City
- Country
When you hover over the circle for "hidden" hops, the number of hidden hops is displayed.
The lines between hops indicate if there was any packet loss between the two. A continuous line means there was no packet loss, and a dotted line indicates some amount of packet loss.
