How To Use The PathPing Command

Using the pathping command. The Pathping tool is a route tracing tool which combines features of both the Ping and Tracert commands with some additional information which neither of those two commands provide. PathPing is a network utility supplied in Windows NT and beyond that combines the functionality of ping with that of tracert. It provides details of the path between two hosts and Ping-like statistics for each node in the path based on samples taken over a time period, depending on how many nodes are between the start and end host. The advantages of PathPing over ping and traceroute are that each node is pinged as the result of a single command, and that the behavior of nodes is studied over an extended time period, rather than the default ping sample of four messages or default traceroute single route trace. Since Pathping calculates the loss of packets from each hop, it will be easy to determine which router is causing network issues. To display the parameters in Pathping, open a command prompt with admin priviledges and type Pathping /?.

Accepted parameters for the Pathping command are as follows:

• -4 : Specifies pathping.exe may only use IPv4 for the pathping.
• -6 : Specifies pathping.exe can only use IPv6 for the pathping.
• -g Host-list : Allows for the hosts being separated by intermediate gateways.
• -h maximumHops : Sets the max number of hops prior to reaching a target – default is 30 hops.
• -i address : Uses a specified source address.
• -n : Specifies that it is unnecessary to resolve the address to the hostname.
• -p period : Sets the number of seconds to wait between pings – default is 0.25 seconds.
• -q num_queries : Sets the query number to each host along the route – default is 3.
• -w timeout : Sets the timeout for replies in milliseconds.