Scorecards
The scorecards in the Network Path Performance tab display aggregated trace route data from the current sensor and for similar crowd sensors. This information includes:
- Time to complete – the time it takes for the trace to reach its destination
- Average time per hop – the average round trip time for the hops in a trace
- Past average – the average time to complete for this sensor in the past
- Crowd average – the average time to complete for similar traces from other users in the crowd
- Segments – traces are broken into segments based on detected changes in Autonomous System Numbers (ASN)
- Longest segments – the three segments where the most time was spent in the trace
- Longest avg segments – the three segments where the most time was spent in past traces
Note: The points on the Network Path Performance chart on the top half of the page each represent a trace. The value of the point is determined by the average Round Trip Delay Time for the final hop in the trace.
Trace Table
The NPP tab trace table displays information about the current trace, including the following columns:
- Host – the host name, or if unavailable, the address and Autonomous System Organization name if available
- % Packet Loss – the percentage of packets lost
- Average RTT – the average Round Trip Delay Time for the hop
The table also provides several visual cues to help the user quickly glean information about the trace. A dark dotted line is drawn between hops whenever a change in ASN is detected, breaking the trace into segments, and allowing the user to determine the border between ASNs. Each hop also has a color swatch. The swatch will be light gray for an unknown ASN, but otherwise the specific color is not important. All other colors are provided purely to help the user quickly see which hops belong to the same ASN. That can be useful in several ways:
- When a gray swatch is next to an ASN border (dashed line), it can indicate that the border may not be exact, because the ASN on one side could not be determined.
- The scorecards in the NPP tab show aggregated trace data, including time per segment (time spent in each ASN). One of these segments may be ‘Unknown’ which encompasses any hop where we could not determine the ASN, including private addresses.
- A gray swatch in the middle of a segment (surrounded by hops with matching colors) probably belongs to the same ASN, but since its ASN cannot be positively identified, its RTT will not be included in data analysis for that segment.
In addition to segment data, the trace table also highlights relative hop data. A waterfall representation of the trace displays the RTT of each hop relative to the other hops in the trace, And the row(s) with the longest RTT of the trace are shown in red.
Finally, when a row in the table is hovered over, a hop specific scorecard appears showing the hop number, the address, the trace type (ICMP or TCP), the individual ping times, and a link to the American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN) where the user can find out more information about the ASN if desired.