Moreover, you might use ping to determine the round-trip time in milliseconds to another device on the network. However, any tools that generate a lot of traffic through your ISP's routers will probably trigger an alarm. If your traffic increases CPU usage or saturates a link to the Internet, your ISP may investigate and limit your activities. Traceroute builds on the functionality of ping by evaluating the hops along a path and calculating the time it takes a packet to travel from one router to the next. To learn where the delay is occurring, use traceroute to examine the round-trip time to each of the routers along the path.
Analyzers capture all packets, or specific packets defined in a filter, into a trace buffer.
The analyzer decodes the packets to give you a readable definition of the contents. Some more advanced analyzers, such as Network Associates' Sniffer Pro, can also interpret the communications patterns to provide alarms and troubleshooting recommendations. AG Group's EtherPeek is another popular analyzer, and Windows NT comes with a no-frills analyzer called Network Monitor. Port scanning can tell you what services are available on a remote device. Just as using ping could get you into trouble, your ISP or the targeted system may construe port scanning or port probing as a hostile action or intrusion.