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Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] Counting no of hops to remote IP address?

From: Hansang Bae <hbae@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:59:55 -0500
At 10:56 AM 1/30/2009, Syed Faraz Hasan wrote:
>Hello everyone!
> 
>I want to calculate the number of hops from my PC to some remote one. I am doing it using the tracert DOS command. For example, I want to count the no of hops to address 84.53.138.41. When I use tracert, it fails after reaching 193.63.68.1 address on 5th hop. My network administrator says its because it is administratively prohibited.
> 
>Can some one help me on this, preferably through wireshark.


What is it that you are trying to solve?  Hop counts for the most part are completely meaningless these days.  Rarely does it come into play.  What you really should focus on is the round trip time.  

PS A few months ago, lot of people on Comcast were unable to upgrade their FW on his/her Denon 3808 receiver.  When I sniffed the upgrade on my 3808, I found out that TTL was set to 30.  And it took 28 hops for me to get to the server.  So comcast just has a bigger diameter than other ISPs (is my guess).

So yes, it can come into play at times, but VERY VERY few devices use TTL that low anymore.   Denon was quick to upgrade the FW so it wouldn't use 30.  

hsb