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VisualRoute Support
(Version 4.2a)
Index
Running VisualRoute for
the first time
Online Help
Selecting a
host/port to monitor
Selecting an IP address to monitor
VisualRoute Analysis
Trace Route Table
Trace Route Map
VisualRoute Menu
VisualRoute Preferences Dialog
Advanced Options
Popup WHOIS support
Java 1.1
Application Support
Trouble-Shooting Guide
Problems with eSafe and NetZIP
A Special
Note for Netscape Navigator Users
VisualRoute Server
Contacting Us
Please note that this support page describes the
latest version
of VisualRoute. If you are running an older version, please upgrade.
Running VisualRoute for the first time
When you run VisualRoute for the first time, you
will be presented
with a dialog box asking you to enter a License key
(obtained by pressing the purchase button):
Run: Press this button after entering your License key
to activate the full version of VisualRoute.
Run as trial: Press this button for a free trial evaluation
of VisualRoute.
Purchase: Press this button to go to the www.visualroute.com purchase
page. Your registration number will be automatically filled in for you.
After purchasing the License key, enter it into this dialog and
press the 'Run' button.
After the main VisualRoute application window becomes visible, please
select a host to monitor.
Online Help
Selecting a host/port to monitor
Enter the host and optional port that you want
to monitor into the edit
box and press Enter to start VisualRoute:
TIP: Cut (ctrl-c) a host name from another application and paste (ctrl-v)
into VisualRoute, or use the right mouse button context menu.
The host/port must be entered in a URL-like syntax that looks like:
| protocol://hostname:port/page.html |
Where the fields are:
| Field |
Description |
| protocol |
A
protocol
such as http, ftp, whois, etc. |
| hostname |
Any TCP/IP host name or address. |
| port |
A port number such as 23, 80, etc. |
| page.html |
Any text that is currently ignored. |
All fields are optional except for
'hostname', which must be specified.
For example:
www.microsoft.com
http://www.testing.com:8080
ftp://ftp.gw2k.com
http://www.oracle.com/products/
At any time, you may enter a new host/port
to monitor. Any currently running
trace route will be stopped and the new one started.
Selecting an IP address
to monitor
After entering that host and port that you
want to monitor, VisualRoute will
resolve it to a list of IP addresses and automatically
start the trace route to the first IP address in the list.
You may start a new trace route at
any time by double-clicking on a new IP address. Any currently running
trace route will be stopped and the new one started.
Many Internet
hosts will resolve to only one IP address. Other very large sites (such
as www.microsoft.com and www.nytimes.com) will resolve to many IP addresses.
VisualRoute Analysis
A typical analysis section looks like:
Trace Route Table
Note: In general, text that is displayed in purple is non-authoritative (from
a local cache on your hard drive maintained by VisualRoute) and text
displayed in black is authoritative. Non-authoritative information is
validated as soon as possible, but is displayed immediately to speed up
the display of information to you.
|
Hop |
The trace route hop count.
|
| Err |
The number of ping packets that were lost at
this hop level. This number
is red if a host is detected at this hop level. This means that ping
packets are being lost. Otherwise, this number is
black, because the host may just be ignoring all of our ping packets.
As this number is out of a total of 10, it represents the % of ping packets lost (1 lost packet is 10% packets lost).
|
| IP Address |
The IP address of the host at this hop level.
It is
red if a recent ping packet was lost. It is blue when it matches a
Loose Source Route IP address. Otherwise, it is black.
The IP Address is bolded if it is the host that you are trace
routing to.
|
| Node Name |
The DNS lookup of the IP Address.
|
| Location |
The location of the node. It is black if we are
fairly certain of the
node's location. Otherwise it is purple, meaning that the location is
a best guess based upon information from various WHOIS databases.
|
| ms |
The average number of milliseconds that it
took for a ping packet to
go from your machine to this hop level and back to your machine (just
like the system 'tracert' program).
|
| Graph |
The blue line is a graph of the 'ms' column.
The gray horizontal bar
in each hop line represents the minimum and maximum millisecond times
for that hop level.
|
| Network |
The network that this node is in, as reported
by various WHOIS databases.
|
TIP: You can use your mouse to resize the
table columns.
Trace Route Map
The trace route is displayed on a map of the World. Links
drawn in blue indicate known locations. Links drawn in purple
indicate that a guess was made.
VisualRoute will immediately redraw the map as new information becomes
available from the trace route. In some cases, this will result in lines
previously drawn looking like they are being erased and drawn elsewhere.
You are just seeing VisualRoute update its map information in real-time.
There are two methods for maneuvering the map. When the "Quick map zoom" box is checked in the Options/Preferences dialog, the
mouse has the following functions:
| Left Mouse Click |
Zoom IN
|
| Right Mouse Click |
Zoom OUT
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| Mouse Drag |
Moves the map around
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When the "Quick map zoom" option is not
selected, the mouse has a right button menu with menu options to zoom in and out, and
save the map as a jpeg image. The left mouse button may be used to drag the map.
VisualRoute Menu
File
Print... -
Prints the heading, analysis, table, and map. Printing support requires
Java version 1.1 or later.
Exit VisualRoute -
Exits the VisualRoute application.
Edit
Snap table as text... -
This will
snap a text version
of the heading, analysis, and table. Great for e-mailing the results!
A shortcut to this option is the 'button'
in the table (upper right:  ).
Save Table/Map Image (as JPEG) - Allows you to save the traceroute Table and World Map as a
graphic in the JPEG format.
Options
Scan Network -
Turns network scanning on/off. Network scanning will provide a better
analysis when the trace route node is down or does not exist.
How it works.
However, use carefully since high security sites may think
you are attacking their network.
Hot Links -
Displays the hot links status line. This is primarily a way to us to notify
you of program updates and other significant events related to VisualRoute.
Preferences... -
Displays the VisualRoute Preferences Dialog.
Java Console... -
Allows you to view the Java console.
Column Preferences - Displays the Column Preferences dialog box which enables you to hide or show any column in the
traceroute table and modify the order of appearance
Tools
VisualRoute Server -
The VisualRoute Server package (a separately priced
option) that allows a web browser to access VisualRoute. Please refer
to the
VisualRoute Server page for more details.
Help
www.visualroute.com... - Takes you to the VisualRoute home page
Support... - Takes you to this web page.
Give us feedback about the product... - Takes you to our Feedback web page
Frequently Asked Questions... - Takes you to our FAQ web page.
How to Purchase... - Takes you to our Purchase web page.
About VisualRoute... - Displays the About box. The amount of memory
used in the Java VM is displayed in this dialog.
VisualRoute Preferences Dialog
To view the preferences dialog, select
"Preferences..." in the Options menu.
Advanced GUI -
Allows you to enter a 'Loose Source Route' and shows the latitude and
longitude mouse position over maps.
Graph location guesses -
Graphs the first and last location guesses (intermediate guesses are not
graphed) on the map.
Show map labels -
Shows map labels (usually on non-world maps).
Show map -
Toggles map display on/off.
Quick map zoom -
Enables zoom in on left mouse button click, and zoom out on
right click (as in previous versions). Otherwise, the map
popup menu will be displayed on right click.
Alternate world map centering -
Draws a world map so that Australia is nearer the center.
Use DNS LOC Locations -
When checked, tells VisualRoute to search for DNS LOC records
(as specified in
RFC 1876)
for geographical location information. For example, try connecting
to www.yahoo.com. For more information, refer to
DNS LOC.
Save map position on exit -
Saves the last map position when VisualRoute is closed, to be displayed the next time VisualRoute is opened.
Font Size -
Controls the table font size.
Local WHOIS cache is authoritative -
Determines if data found in the local WHOIS cache is considered
authoritative, which can help to significantly reduce the
number of connections to WHOIS servers.
Clear Caches -
Flushes both the memory and disk caches.
Report unknown node names to visualroute.com -
Reports node names discovered to visualroute.com, which helps
us to improve the geographical database.
Restart -
Restarts VisualRoute, which flushes memory caches.
Hot Links -
Connects to www.visualroute.com at program startup to check
for new Hot Links, which notify you of new releases, etc.
Port Probing -
Probes protocol ports of the entered URL (HTTP/FTP/etc)
for information to improve the analysis.
Advanced Options
These advanced options are enabled by
selecting "Advanced..." in the
Options menu.
Loose Source Route
Usually, your IP packets are automatically routed through the Internet from
your machine to the destination machine and back. Loose Source Route (also
known as LSRR) allows you to specify a node (or nodes) that you want your
IP packets routed through, which allows for remote and round-trip trace
routes. See our Tech Notes web page for more information about
LSRR.
Latitude/Longitude
Shows you the latitude and longitude of your mouse position, when over a map.
Popup WHOIS
support
Popup WHOIS support is available by clicking on
rows in the 'Network' column
(for network WHOIS information) or the 'Node Name' column (for domain WHOIS
information).
For example, clicking on 'Sprint/Centel' in the network column will popup:
And clicking on a node name in domain 'gnt.net' will popup:
WHOIS handles (in blue) can be clicked on to get more detailed information.
Use the arrows in the title bar of the popup ('<-' and '->') to go 'back'
and 'forward'.
e-mail addresses (in blue) can be clicked on to launch the default MAPI
mail client.
URL's (in blue) can be clicked on to launch the default web browser.
Trouble-Shooting Guide
Problems with eSafe and other anti-virus
software. Several users
have reported that running eSafe
disables VisualRoute. This is because a 'feature' of eSafe prevents a Java
application from running normally unless there is a "protection
set" defined for it. Please refer to your eSafe manual for details on
how to define this "protection set".
Problems with NetZIP. The NetZIP
Folders feature interferes with how Java accesses class files in a ZIP file.
When you attempt to run VisualRoute, you will get an
"Unable to locate system class java\lang\Object"
error message. The solution is to disable NetZIP while you run VisualRoute.
You can temporarily disable NetZIP by right clicking on the NetZIP icon in
the system tray and selecting 'Disable' from the menu.
Do you have the proper Java 1.1 support installed? Most problems
are caused by not having the proper version of Java installed. See the
Java Support
page for more details.
Try reinstalling your Java VM. We have found that a lot
of support issues are cleared up by reinstalling the
Java VM. The problem is file versioning conflicts, which a
reinstall clears up.
Test your internet connection. Do the system commands ping
and tracert work? From a DOS window, try 'ping www.visualroute.com'
or 'tracert www.visualroute.com'.
If these commands do not work, please ask your network administrator
if your TCP/IP stack is properly configured.
Are you running Microsoft's TCP/IP stack? VisualRoute works best
with Microsoft's TCP/IP stack. The Microsoft TCP/IP stack comes with
Windows.
Is your display set to 800x600, 256 colors, or better? This is a minimum
requirement for VisualRoute.
Copyright © 1999-2000
Datametrics Systems Corporation
Send comments about this website to webmaster@visualroute.com
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