If you experience network problems (eg. if you cant reach a site or the response times are very long), please use the following network tools to try to diagnose the problem. You can specify either a host's name or its IP address. The default hosts (195.166.13.131 and rs.internic.net) are not in our domain, so, if you can reach these, the problems are not at our site.

Ping

The ping utility transmits a packet of information to the destination host and waits for a response or until a timeout period has elapsed. This will be repeated a further 4 times with, at least, a one second pause between each transmission. If the destination host does not exist, ie. does not have an entry in a DNS database, no transmission information will be listed. The information displayed indicates the round trip packet times and the number of packets that were lost.

Traceroute

The traceroute utility will determine and display the route taken by packets as they travel from our network to the destination host. If the destination host does not exist, ie. does not have an entry in a DNS database, no transmission information will be listed. The information displayed indicates the hosts/routers via which the packets are routed and the packet transit time for each leg of the journey. Network problems are indicated by host names, IP addresses or transit times being replaced by asterisks (*), as responses are timed out.
**Please note** On very slow routes, this procedure can take a long time to complete.