Very rarely you might have problems with the Internet connection between your computer and our servers. If this happens and you contact us, we might ask you to do a traceroute from your computer to runbox.com. This helps us find out where the problem might be, and contact the right people to try and get things fixed.

What is a traceroute?

A traceroute is a way to find out what route data takes from one Internet connection to another. It is often used as a diagnostic tool to find network problems. An example of a traceroute from a server in Switzerland to a connection in the runbox.com data centre is shown below.

traceroute-terminal

What do Traceroutes show?

In the example above, if you look at the names of some of the routers involved in getting data to runbox.com, you can probably work out that they are different Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in different locations. It looks like four ISPs in four different countries are involved.

traceroute

If any of the ISPs along the route has a technical fault, it could affect your ability to connect to runbox.com. This could show up in the traceroute as a very long delay in a router responding, or the traceroute may just fail and not show a complete path to runbox.com

While Runbox may not be directly responsible for the fault, we can often alert ISPs to a problem, and encourage them to get it fixed.

How do I perform a traceroute from my computer to Runbox?

Windows

You will need to launch the Command Prompt program. This can be found by going to:

Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt

The command to type in is:

tracert runbox.com

You should be able to copy and paste the text that is produced so that you can send it to us.

Apple Macintosh

You will need to launch the Terminal application. This can be found by going to:

Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities > Terminal

The command to type in is:

traceroute runbox.com

You should be able to copy and paste the text that is produced so that you can send it to us.

Other ways to test your connection

There are other ways to diagnose problems with your connection to Runbox, below we have included some links to other useful pages on our help website that might help you diagnose problems.