Quincy Center for Technical Education
Computer Technology Department

PathPing

A route tracing tool that combines features of the ping and tracert commands with additional information that neither of those commands provides. The pathping command sends packets to each router on the way to a final destination over a period of time, and then computes results based on the packets returned from each hop. Since pathping shows the degree of packet loss at any given router or link, you can determine which routers or links might be causing network problems.

pathping [-n] [-h maximum_hops] [-g host-list] [-p period] [-q num_queries [-w timeout] [-T] [-R] target_name

Parameters

-n

Does not resolve addresses to host names.

-h maximum_hops

Specifies maximum number of hops to search for the target. Default is 30 hops.

-g host-list

Allows consecutive computers to be separated by intermediate gateways (loose source route) along host-list.

-p period

Specifies number of milliseconds to wait between consecutive pings. Default is 250 milliseconds (1/4 second).

-q num_queries

Specifies number of queries to each computer along the route. Default is 100.

-w timeout

Specifies number of milliseconds to wait for each reply. Default is 3000 milliseconds (3 seconds).

-T

Attaches a layer-2 priority tag (for example, 802.1p) to the ping packets that it sends to each of the network devices along the route. This helps identify network devices that do not have layer-2 priority configured. This parameter must be capitalized.

-R

Checks to see if each network device along the route supports the Resource Reservation Setup Protocol (RSVP), which allows the host computer to reserve a certain amount of bandwidth for a data stream. This parameter must be capitalized.

target_name

Specifies the destination endpoint, identified either by IP address or host name.