How many hops does it take to get to the tootsie roll center

Actually, I’m not going to talk about the chewy goodness of a Tootsie-Pop.  I’d like to, because there is no better topping on a light and fluffy breakfast pastry than melted Tootsie Rolls.  But I digress.

I’m actually going to be talking about how many hops it takes from your computer to your realm.  Why?  Because at any one of those junctures you could be hit with some latency, which is totally outside of your control; but knowing is half the battle.  The tool used for that is Trace Route.

Trace Route is a network utility.  It is not a downloaded tool or WoW add-on.  It is something you already have on your computer.  It’s just a matter of knowing how to use it, and what you can do with that information.

Find your realm:

To use trace route, you need to know the IP address of your realm.  The world wide web does not know where Azgalor, Ysera, or Wildhammer is.  It does know where that IP address is, though, and how to get data to and from that location.  To find your realm’s IP address, click on any of the 3 sources linked below.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1230553941&sid=1

http://www.wowwiki.com/US_realm_list_by_datacenter

http://www.sourcepeek.com/wiki/World_of_Warcraft_Realm_List

Write down you IP address.  Since I rolled on Azgalor, I’m going to use it’s IP address in my example: 206.16.235.8:3724.  The last four digits, after the colon, is the port number.  You can ignore that for the traceroute.

Using Traceroute:

Traceroute is actually a DOS command.  DOS is not dead, regardless of what people think.  Long live DOS!

In Windows, select Start > Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt or select Start > Run and then type CMD.

At the prompt, type in tracert and the IP address then press <Enter>.

By default, tracert will only make a maximum of 30 hops.  But there is something else you should know.  Blizzard purposely prevents utilities like trace route from recognizing a successful completion.  So, once you are at the server, or just one hop away, you will get time-outs and can <ctrl>+C to cancel the trace route process.  Below is my trace route results, and I pinged my realm (Azgalor) as well.

Interpreting Traceroute:

You can see on hop #11 that I have arrived in Dallas, where my realm is located, based on abbreviations in the domain.  The further 3 hops timed out, so I can assume that I’m close to the server and canceled the process.  I also pinged the realm just to see what would happen.  I’m not surprised it timed out due to Blizz’s performance & security measures.

The first column is the hop number.  Trace route makes three attempts per hop, which are the 2nd through 4th columns.  The 5th column is the domain, or location, of the hop.  In my example, the first hop timed out.  I don’t know why.  I’m guessing because it is either my switch or modem, which does not have a call & answer ability.  The second hop was fast, which is should be because it is the first hop out of your local network.  From there, you start getting into shared pipelines with all your neighbors as well as everyone else on the internet.  I made it to my realm after 11 hops, and the highest latency is 323 ms.  (It does 3 attempts per hop to get an average.  That’s why I’m ignoring the 436ms time when the other 2 were 79 & 78.  There was a little spike in traffic or other network hic-up there which does not represent a usual latency.)

To compare that with PerformanceFu.

PerformanceFu registers a latency of 314 ms.  Pretty darn accurate considering the latency is constantly changing.

(Note: Thankfully, this is not my usual latency.  I average 180 – 200ms latency.  My results are high at the time of this writing because I have an online backup program running, sucking up most of my bandwidth.)

What to do with the Information:

If you typically have high latency or frequent disconnects, this is the first tool you should use before calling your ISP.  Then, pick up the phone and call them.  Give them this information and tell them where Trace Route is showing high latencies.  It may be off their network, so they may not be able to do anything.  In this case, anything past hop #7 is outside of my ISP’s ability to adjust and I just have to live with it.

I’ll give you a personal example of how I resolved frequent disconnects and high latency.  First, I compliment my ISP for their fabulous up-time and availability of clear-English speaking tech support.  But, the representative always assumes that the person on the other end is a complete computer noob and tells you to “restart your computer.  Call back if the problem persists.”  Because I had Trace Route data to back up my claims, they actuall stayed on the line to help me.  That’s important because if the didn’t, they wouldn’t have found one of my problems.

I was originally maintaining a steady 280 ms latency when having the disconnect problems.  It so happens that I’ve had 3 ISPs because the first one sold out, then the 2nd one broke up its accounts by region, so now I’m on the 3rd.  In order to keep my service active during the transition, they created a “bridge” connection.  It’s a stop-gap measure that is quick fix to route traffic, but it is slow.  Without making them look at my account, they would not have checked that I was still on a bridge connection – something I should have been transfered off of within a few weeks/months of the switch.  The resolution was to reconfigure my modem (from their end) so I connected straight into their network.  My latencly dropped from 280ms to the 180ms I live with today.  That didn’t resolve the disconnects, so I knew it was something on my end and that’s when I troubleshot it to my home-network switch.  Now I’m fast and stable, thanks to trace route.

More information:

Something else that you should configure is how well you DNS resolves domain names to their ISP, and how secure it is.  I recently switched from my ISP’s DNS to OpenDNS.  It’s free, and so far has been very good to me.  Your results may vary, but it may be worth looking into if you have network problems.  (I have no affiliation with OpenDNS.  Use at your own risk.)

Selecting your Realm:

Most of us selected the realms we  play on because of friends.  But, if you are looking for a fresh start, or realm transfer, consider finding it with Trace Route.  Start with the links above and look for realms physically located in your part of the world.  Then, use Tracert on those IP addresses and find the one with the lowest latency.  If you are making a clean start, might as well make it a quick one!