User blog:Martirsadota/A Rapid-Fire Tutorial on Layer Four Tracerouting (Windows-focused)

=Intro=

If you have experienced a catbomb and asked for help over at the Connection page, you may have at one point been asked to perform a Layer Four Traceroute (LFT). It may have been followed by a scene wherein you're struck dumb by a hard slap of a geeky phrase right across your frontal lobes. Hopefully this guide can help avoid that scene.

This guide is designed for Windows users; those on 'nix are smarter than I and know what the heck I'm talking about here.

=First, a Little Background=

A Layer Four Traceroute (hereafter referred to as an  ) is a modification of the  /   program used to discover the path your connection takes from your computer to the servers you're connecting to (in this case, the Kancolle servers).

Traceroute?
Yes,  (  on Windows). Both traceroute and LFT work on similar principles.

So, What's the Difference?
Good, old  / , sadly, doesn't work on Kancolle. Here's the rub: traceroute and LFT use different methods, and the Kancolle servers reject traceroute's methods. To illustrate, here's output of a  to a Kancolle server:

Tracing route to 125.6.189.71 over a maximum of 15 hops

1   <1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.254.254 2   75 ms    58 ms    77 ms  10.188.44.219 3   41 ms    26 ms    63 ms  10.188.45.170 4   25 ms    34 ms    39 ms  112.198.191.61 5   73 ms    84 ms    77 ms  120.28.4.210 6  195 ms   127 ms   128 ms  2519.tyo.equinix.com [203.190.230.19] 7  105 ms    84 ms     *     ae0.transit2.nihonbashi.vectant.ne.jp [163.139.1 28.118] 8   117 ms    74 ms    75 ms  163-139-226-114.rv.vectant.ne.jp [163.139.226.11 4] 9    77 ms    75 ms    75 ms  203.174.66.158 10    *        *        *     Request timed out. 11    *        *        *     Request timed out. 12    *        *        *     Request timed out. 13    *        *        *     Request timed out. 14    *        *        *     Request timed out. 15    *        *        *     Request timed out.

Trace complete.

And compare that with an LFT trace (done with  on Windows):

Tracing route to 125.6.189.71 on port 80 Over a maximum of 15 hops. 1      2 ms    9 ms    1 ms    192.168.254.254 2      25 ms   26 ms   67 ms   10.188.44.219 3      *       *       67 ms   10.188.45.170 4      *       *       *       Request timed out. 5      76 ms   75 ms   80 ms   120.28.10.182 6      80 ms   128 ms  118 ms  203.190.230.19  [2519.tyo.equinix.com] 7      110 ms  99 ms   88 ms   163.139.128.118 [ae0.transit2.nihonbashi.vectant.ne.jp] 8      134 ms  81 ms   135 ms  163.139.226.114 [163-139-226-114.rv.vectant.ne.jp] 9      *       74 ms   109 ms  203.174.66.158 10     Destination Reached in 71 ms. Connection established to 125.6.189.71 Trace Complete.

You can't tell if you've reached the Kancolle server using ; line 10 could've been a broken router between you and the Kancolle server, or it could've been the Kancolle server, but   won't know because the server blocks the program's probings. Contrast that with the LFT trace, where you'll instantly know you're connected to the server (except the broken node in #4, which is "interesting").

Now you're convinced that you need LFT for helping you solve your catbomb woes. How are you going to use it? Before that, how are you going to get it? (Windows doesn't come with LFT by default.)

=The Solution: = is a neat little tool that does just that: an LFT. Now, whenever you're asked to perform an LFT, you can just fire it up and submit the output to whoever asked you to perform it.

"So how do I fire it up?" you ask. Good question.

=Using =

requires a bit of setup. It also requires that you're logged in to the computer as an Administrator.

#1: Install Pre-requisite(s)
For  to work you'll need WinPcap, which is what   uses to do its magic. If you've been following my tutorial on asset grabbing, Wireshark already installed WinPcap for you. If you haven't, get the installer here, install and proceed.

#2: Get
wip

=Footnotes and References=