Rubberbanding!

[Folsom]

Instead of doing a tracert, do a pathping to see if you're getting packet loss anywhere on the route. Just type pathping and then the IP address. It takes a lot longer, but it will give you the route and 100 pings to each server along it, and comes out as follows:

Tracing route to 199.91.189.31 over a maximum of 30 hops

  6  te0-0-0-13.ccr21.sea02.atlas.cogentco.com [38.104.127.105] 
  7  be2085.ccr21.slc01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.2.198] 
  8  be2126.ccr21.den01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.65] 
  9  be2129.mpd21.mci01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.26.114] 
 10  be2156.ccr21.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.6.86] 
 11  be2081.ccr21.yyz02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.42.10] 
 12  be2090.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.30.206] 
 13  38.122.42.34 
 14  192.34.76.10 
 15  199.91.189.242 
 16  199.91.189.31 

Computing statistics for 400 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address

  6   30ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  te0-0-0-13.ccr21.sea02.atlas.cogentco.com [38.104.127.105] 
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  7   38ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  be2085.ccr21.slc01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.2.198] 
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  8   49ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  be2126.ccr21.den01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.65] 
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  9   61ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  be2129.mpd21.mci01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.26.114] 
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 10   73ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  be2156.ccr21.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.6.86] 
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 11   86ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  be2081.ccr21.yyz02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.42.10] 
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 12   94ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  be2090.ccr21.ymq02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.30.206] 
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 13   94ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  38.122.42.34 
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 14   97ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  192.34.76.10 
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 15   95ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  199.91.189.242 
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 16   94ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  199.91.189.31

I removed the first 5 hops since they're local to my ISP. Any numbers at 0% and 100% are likely okay. Anything other than that, either in the Source to Here or Link columns show a problem along the path. Of course, you'd want to do this when you're actually experiencing the problem (if it comes and goes) otherwise everything will look good even though it isn't always.

Format for running one = pathping ###.###.###.###

You can type > Drive:\filename.txt to copy it into a text file.