During troubleshooting for voice quality issues and for other Internet related problems, you may be asked to install and use WinMTR.

WinMTR is a powerful network diagnostic tool that enables users to diagnose and isolate networking errors and provide helpful reports of network status to upstream providers such as Telappliant. WinMTR represents an evolution of the traceroute command by providing a greater data sample, as if augmenting traceroute with ping output. The tool is a free/open source Microsoft Windows application (GPL v2), available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. 

Installing WinMTR

WinMTR can be installed on any Windows platform. Follow these steps to download and install the application.

1. Navigate to http://winmtr.net/winmtr_download/ using your internet browser. The application will automatically start to download.
2. Open your download folder and locate the winmtr.zip file. Extract this compressed file. The application does not require any further installation.
3. There will be two folders created; WinMTR-32 and WinMTR-64.
   
   
   

Running WinMTR

Once you have uncompressed the application you can now run WinMTR. If you need you can copy this entire folder to another location or even another computer. The following steps assume that you are still looking at the folder in which you extracted the application.

1. Double-click on the appropriate folder for the Windows platform you are using. If you are unsure then use the WinMTR-32 folder.
2. Right-click on "WinMTR" in the folder window and click on "Run as administrator".
   
3. You may be prompted by a User Access Control (UAC) dialog confirming that you wish to allow this application to run. Click on Allow or Yes. If you are asked to enter a password then you will need to enter a password of someone who is an Administrator for that computer. This may be your password or you may need to ask an IT administrator for assistance.
   
   
   

Using WinMTR

Generally we will ask you to run WinMTR to our domain (www.voiptalk.org) or, if applicable, to the IP Address of your VoIPOffice (77.240.xx.xxx). Follows these steps to start the trace.

1. Enter a value as instructed in to the "Host" field. This will typically be "www.voiptalk.org" or an IP address.
   
2. Click on the Options button and changes the "Interval" value to be 0.3. Then click the OK button to close the Options page.
   
3. Click the Start button to start the trace.

The trace will continue until you push the Stop button however at any time, even whilst the trace is still running, you can copy the results to the clipboard or export them. 

For most issues we will ask you to run the trace for about 30 minutes after which time you should provide us the results in both text and html formats. 

Basic analysis of WinMTR results

The results of the trace will look like this:

Each row is a "hop" (step) in the path between the computer running WinMTR and the Host entered. This will include any internal hops, the hops within your internet service providers (ISP) network and the last hop should be the Host the trace is running to. If the Host is not listed last then this may indicate a connectivity problem.

You may find that some of the hops show 100% packet loss or read "No host response". This may not actually reflect a problem but is more typically explained by the fact that the specific device is not responding to the ICMP packets that are being sent by the tool. 

The two most important data points in the results are the Loss and Avrg columns. The loss should be no more than 1% although to be considered a concern, the loss should continue to deteriorate from one row to the next as in the following diagram:

The Avrg column shows the average latency (delay in packet transmission by the network/node) and it should not exceed more than 150 (which equates to 150 milliseconds) for any hop.

Additional Information

If the results show "No raw socket found" or "Unable to get the raw socket" then this indicates a local problem with the computer running the trace.

• Ensure that you are running that application using the "Run as Administrator" option as detailed above.
• Some firewall and Anti-virus software can impact the trace. Try disabling the firewall and security software for a brief time to collect the trace then re-enable it afterwards. 
• It is recommended that you close all other applications and/or perform a full reboot of the computer to ensure that no lingering processes are impacting the trace.