Troubleshooting Internet connections

[wthall () vie com]

We have servers co-located at NAP sites across the country and have several
thousand users connect to us daily. When the users have packetloss or latency
problems I have been using traceroute and ping to troubleshoot their
connections. From some recent threads here, I am concerned that these tools are
giving me a false image of which routers are having problems because of the
differences between the way some routers process the packets sent to them and
packets sent through them (different priorities and input queues). Is there
anyway other then traceroute and ping to pinpoint problems on an Internet
connection? Thanks for any ideas you may have.

Wayne Hall
Network Manager
VIE