Adding to my list:
7. Kernel traceroute implementation varies
8. UDP vs ICMP vs TCP probe types matter
9. Paris traceroute exists and helps
10. This thread is now a decent FAQ
My traceroute shows stars but ping works fine
FyreJun
Member
traceroute -T for TCP. Always. ICMP is for pinging, UDP is for DNS, TCP is for showing you the real path the traffic takes. Middleboxes respect TCP because they must.
JokoNord
Member
JokoNord I demand refund from who, Contabo? They give me 8 euro VPS, I demand 8 euro back? For stars in traceroute? Man you are funny.
traffic worse than my packet loss
Following. I see this on my mail server path to Gmail, stars then suddenly arrives. Never affected deliverability.
SPF, DKIM, DMARC — holy trinity ✉️
blogfranck
Member
On my Kimsufi in Gravelines, same stars to everywhere. Years now. I host Nextcloud, Plex, Wireguard, all works. Traceroute is diagnostic toy, not production metric.
Buenos
Member
Contabo to Buenos Aires, stars. DigitalOcean to Buenos Aires, stars. Linode to Buenos Aires, stars. My cheap fiber ISP, stars. Is Argentina thing maybe? No, is internet thing.
This.
From Sydney I traceroute to CarlosBilby Contabo Singapore, stars in middle. Traceroute to Contabo Sydney, clean. Same company, different path logic. The anycast scrubbing theory holds.
My four cheap servers: one Hetzner Nuremberg, one Contabo Singapore, one local Thai host, one AWS Lightsail. All show stars somewhere. Only AWS gives clean path, and costs 5x. You pay for visibility or you pay for bandwidth, pick one.
I run my own routers in Helsinki. Traceroute from my ASN to anywhere, I see replies because I control the edge. But past my upstream, stars. The internet is opaque by design now. DDoS broke the open network.