How to provide details on possible network issues

Support

Updated July 19, 2023 11:14

Tilaa monitors her network 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If our services are not available, we have a dedicated standby staff that is notified immediately by our monitoring system. Our on-call expert will handle it as soon as possible. However, if an issue arises, we want to provide our customers with the best possible support and be transparent about how we resolve it. Therefore, we communicate network issues via support portal.

Steps to take before reporting a network problem

1. Netstat: When troubleshooting a network service, the first step is to make sure it's up and functioning. You may print information about the Linux networking subsystem, including running services, using the netstat command. It may show the name of the application as well as the PID for each socket. Use netstat in the following way:

$ netstat –atup

$ netstat -atup | grep LISTEN

2. Video display: We recommend using the console in your control panel to test the functionality of your VPS. If your VPS is up and running, and your IP addresses are reachable, you can assume that the problem isn't due to a network outage, but rather to a flaw in your configuration.

Submitting a network issue

If you could provide the following information in a support ticket, it would greatly really help us in correctly analyzing a potential networking issue towards/with your VPS:

A description of the issues you've noticed and a time frame
The affected VPS name
Any other details you think are relevant, such as logs or screenshots
MTR or WinMTR in both ways (to and from the IP address of your server)
The IP address of your source
Destination IP address, if not the Server IP address

A simple ping or traceroute test does not provide the same level of detail as an MTR report. If you're unfamiliar with MTR, it combines traceroute and ping. In other words, it will show you the route to your server while also performing frequent checks on the networking devices (e.g. routers) in that path to detect potential (intermittent) network issues.

How to install MTR with your Operating System

Linux OS

MTR is already installed on the majority of Linux PCs. If you don't already have MTR, use this link (Github) and install it.

macOS

MTR is not available in the Apple Store or on Macs running Mac OS X. MTR can be installed using Homebrew or MacPorts.

Windows OS

Download WinMTR from SourceForge. Unzip the file and execute run the 32-bit or 64-bit version that best suits your system.

How to generate an MTR Report

Linux or Mac

After installing MTR, you'll be able to generate an MTR report to share with the team. We recommend running the following commands on a Unix/Linux system:

mtr -rwc 50 <destination IP>

Note that packet loss often only is indicative of an issue if packet loss or increased latency is persistent. For example, if halfway through the MTR you suddenly experience packet loss on a hop, this has to be the case for all further hops as well. A single occurrence of packet loss may well be a router which deprioritizes ICMP.

Ensure your VPS responds to ICMP requests which are needed to properly analyze any issues (if all hops appear to respond, but the last one doesn't, this may be indicative of the VPS not responding to these requests).

Please supply us with the following details in your support ticket:

An MTR which has run for at least 100 rounds to your server's IP or a traceroute ("tracert" in Windows) to your server's IP, preferably done multiple times.
Also, if possible, supply an MTR or traceroute done on your Tilaa server to the location which is having the connection issues. In other words, the same test as in the previous step, but in reverse.

We can use these details to troubleshoot your perceived issues. If the issue isn't with our network, we can use the details to point you in the right direction as to where this could/should be resolved.