You suspect your network is burping because your storage replication is slow or failing, or maybe your CIFS shares have inconsistent write errors or disconnects, or you just think the network is slow as molasses. Before calling your network team and waking them from their post lunch nap, try to pinpoint the issue with pathping.exe. It has been there since Windows XP and is a little known utility.

Pathping.exe provides information about network latency and network loss at intermediate hops between a source and destination. Pathping sends multiple Echo Request messages to each router between a source and destination over a period of time and then computes results based on the packets returned from each router. Because pathping displays the degree of packet loss at any given router or link, you can determine which routers or subnets might be having network problems. Pathping performs the equivalent of the tracert command by identifying which routers are on the path. It then sends pings periodically to all of the routers over a specified time period and computes statistics based on the number returned from each.

Example:

C:\Users\me>pathping -n 212.58.251.195

Tracing route to 212.58.251.195 over a maximum of 30 hops

0  10.1.0.20
1  10.1.0.1
2  192.168.1.253
3  173.73.46.1
4  130.81.190.164
5  130.81.151.230
6  152.63.32.133
7  152.63.33.41
8  63.125.125.42
9  80.91.252.45
10  80.91.246.69
11  213.155.133.3
12  213.248.104.70
13     *        *        *
Computing statistics for 300 seconds…
Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
0                                                                 10.1.0.20
0/ 100 =  0%   |
1    0ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  10.1.0.1
0/ 100 =  0%   |
2    1ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  192.168.1.253
0/ 100 =  0%   |
3   10ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  173.73.46.1
0/ 100 =  0%   |
4   14ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  130.81.190.164
0/ 100 =  0%   |
5   17ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  130.81.151.230
0/ 100 =  0%   |
6   20ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  152.63.32.133
0/ 100 =  0%   |
7   16ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  152.63.33.41
0/ 100 =  0%   |
8   45ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  63.125.125.42
0/ 100 =  0%   |
9   30ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  80.91.252.45
                                             0/ 100 =  0%   |
 10   96ms     8/ 100 =  8%     8/ 100 =  8%  80.91.246.69
0/ 100 =  0%   |
11   93ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  213.155.133.3
0/ 100 =  0%   |
12   89ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  213.248.104.70

Trace complete.

You can clearly see that between hops 9 and 10 (in red above) the RTT (round trip time) jumps to 93 milliseconds with 8% packet loss. Bingo. Point your network person to this router.