Why does the first hop in a tracert scan timeout?

Question

I'm troubleshooting an issue where a user of our website is constantly being logged out of our website. I remotely connected to the users workstation and couldn't not immediately find an issues.

I ran a tracert from the command line from her PC to our website and the very first hop (1.) timed out then it went through the rest of the trace normally.

She is running Windows 2k, Norton System Security 2006, IE 6, Comcast Small Biz Cable Internet using a router (linsys i believe).

Why would the first hop timeout and the rest complete normally? I assume this is the hop off of her machine to her modem / router.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes, this would be he hop from her machine to the router.



Sounds like the router isn't responding to the ping request (doesn't echo ping), but this isn't necessarily a bad thing (the router could just be set this way). If you can get to the Internet the router is doing its job.



Is this a locally hosted web-site? Have you tried increasing the session timeout for the problematic web page (done on the IIS (or whatever) web server)?



Or perhaps there's a cookie issue? Does Norton block the cookie for your website? Or is IE misconfigured in regards to cookies?

Answer 2

Norton System Security usually is configured to not echo replies to pings. You can turn this feature off. The same is true for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 - the Windows Security center needs to be told to allow to echo ping requests.

Answer 3

Yea that's weird.



Normally I would be into the MTU size and verify that packets are not getting fragmented.



But based upon your analysis, I would be most inclined to scrutinize the SW and the HW on said system. I would look at the system services focussed on the items you mentioned. I might even try a different browser.