Many have come across a situation where the Internet speed decreases, the pages stop loading quickly, and instead of the pictures, a sadly spinning download wheel appears. If you encounter such a problem, it is important to find out what is the reason - this will help to take the right steps in resolving the issue and save your time. This article will talk about how to check for packet loss and find out what the problem is with your Internet connection.
What are packages and how are they lost?
A packet is a specific block of data that is transmitted through network protocols. This means that devices connected to the network via cable networks exchange data and information. One device sends requests, the other receives them. If you do not go into technical details, then this is exactly how any network is arranged, including the Internet.
In the event that there are any malfunctions in the network, not all data can reach the device to which they are addressed, in the amount in which they were sent. In this case, they talk about packet loss. For the user, this can be expressed in the following: pages open slowly in the browser, images, video and audio do not load, and ping increases in online games. How to check the network for packet loss? Any user can do this.
Speed check
To begin with, it is worth noting that not always the low speed and poor performance of the Internet are due to the fact that data is lost from the network equipment or from the provider, as we usually used to think.
The first step is to check the speed of your Internet connection. To do this, go to any speed measuring site (you can find it on request in the search engine) and look at the values that it will give out after an online check.
If they coincide with the numbers that the Internet provider promises, then there is no connection problem and you should check your computer for problems with software or performance. In such cases, cleaning the computer of unused programs, checking with an antivirus, and clearing the browser cache helps.
But if the speed of the Internet connection is checked, and the values are underestimated compared to those declared by the supplier, you can continue to diagnose and conduct further verification.
Command line check
For a basic check, you do not need to install any third-party software on your computer - all operating systems support tools for diagnosing an Internet connection.
Windows has a built-in utility that allows you to check the loss of Internet packets through the command line. As a rule, this diagnosis is enough to detect the presence of a problem.
This utility is ping. It sends a given number of test packets to a specific host, which you set yourself, and broadcasts information about the received response. Thus, you can easily find out how many packets are lost and when interacting with which resources this happens.
Open a command prompt (this is easy to do by typing "Command Prompt" in a Windows search). You will see a black window in front of you prompting you to enter a command. It looks like this.
Enter the following in this window:
ping google.com
After that, press Enter. You will see how the network checks for packet loss, and lines appear on the screen to indicate that the data is passing. At the end there will be a summary of how many packets were sent, how many were received, and how many did not reach the final resource.
You can also instead of the site address enter the IP address of the resource (for example, a game server with problems).
Normally, the result will look like this.
If there are problems with the connection, it will be seen that some of the packets are lost. In order to understand the location of the fault, check a few more resources or IP addresses in the same way. If you see a similar result, most likely something with an Internet connection, and in the case when packets are lost only on the way to one resource, it makes sense to talk about problems directly on it.
Extended Validation
How to check packet loss through the command line in more detail? When you need to understand how many packets are lost in percentage terms, the four packets that are standardly launched by the system are clearly not enough. In such cases, the scan starts with an infinite number of packets, which ends after a certain amount of time by the user. Accordingly, the more packets are sent, the more accurate the result.
Enter the following command:
ping 8.8.8.8 -t
Eights are Google’s standard DNS that they enter to check for packet loss. As already mentioned above, you can use the address of any problem resource.
You can interrupt the test using the combination Ctrl + C at any time after the start. The result will be displayed as a percentage.
In this way, it is possible to determine what extent the problem is taking. If the number of losses does not exceed 2-3 percent, this may not even have a visible effect on the Internet, but if their number goes over 20-30%, this significantly interferes and indicates serious problems with the connection.
Diagnostics with the tracert utility
Tracing will help to localize the problem. To do this, use the tracert command on Windows or traceroute on unix systems.
tracert 8.8.8.8
When this command is entered on the command line, it displays the route that the data goes along and the time that packets go through each given node on the path to the target host.
The node with the longest delay is the source of the problem. So, if you notice that loss or an increase in the delay time occurs in the second step with the IP address 192.168.1.1, this may indicate problems with the router installed at home. If the problem affects step 4-5, most likely there are failures on the provider's equipment, and if further, then we are talking about highways and providers of an international level. The latter, fortunately, is quite rare.
Not always that the packet does not go through a certain point on the route indicates that it affects connection problems. It also happens that it is closed for ping and tracing.
Using third-party programs and utilities
In order to perform a more detailed check, see the data in a visual presentation and understand more deeply how the service works, you can use third-party programs or utilities that will help diagnose the connection and check the packet loss. How to understand what exactly to use?
Type in "Internet Connection Diagnostics Programs" in any search engine - and you will get a sufficient number of links to various programs with screenshots and detailed instructions. Try to download installation files only from reliable sources and check them with anti-virus.
Solving Internet Connection Issues
So, we figured out how to check for packet loss, and the main question arises - what to do to eliminate it.
The very first step to solving the problem is to reboot the equipment. It makes sense to reboot the home router and computer even before you start the diagnosis, often this can save you from unnecessary actions and instantly correct the situation. If the trace shows that the losses go on the router, and rebooting does not help, it is best to contact the service center or replace the router.
If you determine that a particular resource does not work, it is best to contact technical support. They will have to conduct a check on their part and report if there are any emergencies.
If the problem on the part of the provider, as a rule, in the technical support of the supplier, they carry out detailed diagnostics on the part of the Network and identify a problem that may be associated with malfunctions of the station equipment, backbone networks, etc.
Wherever a malfunction is observed, it is very important to find out the exact location and indicate the clear presence of a problem. Even if you can’t influence the situation on the part of the provider in any way, the data obtained during diagnostics can significantly speed up the solution of the problem.