PingPlotter can be used for troubleshooting a variety of problems and network technologies. Here are a few network-dependent technologies that PingPlotter can really help to troubleshoot and fix.

Voice over IP (VoIP)

VoIP is still an emerging technology - and network latency and packet loss both have an enormous effect on VoIP call quality. PingPlotter offers unique insight into network problems, giving *anyone* the ability to pinpoint the problem. Our VoIP Troubleshooting with PingPlotter guide has instructions and examples of how to do this.

If you’re a VoIP customer:
Often, as an end user, you might experience poor voice quality - echoes, delays, poor sound quality, or just the inability to hear the other person talking. These are all symptoms of network problems, but an end user usually doesn't have the right tools to identify the source of the network problem, the nature of the network problem, or even if it is a network problem.

PingPlotter changes this, allowing anyone to troubleshoot network problems. In fact, some VoIP providers have a prospective customer download and run PingPlotter to see if there will be any issues on that customer's Internet connection before he/she signs up for service. If you’re an existing VoIP customer, you can run PingPlotter unobtrusively during a VoIP call, and when voice quality deteriorates, PingPlotter will show you where and why.

If you’re a Network Administrator/Engineer:
It's quite common these days to have VoIP traffic and more traditional traffic like FTP, HTTP etc. all attempting to coexist on the same LAN, WAN and Internet connections. We say attempting, because a lot of the time the bandwidth heavy streaming traffic, as well as FTP and HTTP, can easily saturate a network connection - leaving little room for the VoIP traffic. In the past, the easiest (though most likely very costly) solution was to buy more bandwidth.

As network technology has evolved (and if the network links you’re dealing with support it), you can manage that bandwidth to a degree with QoS and other management tools and techniques. Unfortunately additional bandwidth and technology like QoS can sometimes not help your VoIP link(s) at all when you factor in latency, packet loss or other factors that may be out of your control. Having accurate Jitter numbers, the ability to see if the MOS score is low and what the latency, or delay as it is usually called when discussing VoIP, is to each hop along a route are valuable measurements when troubleshooting VoIP problems.

PingPlotter Standard (previously called PingPlotter Shareware) has built-in QoS support and excels at showing latency/delay and packet loss in a compelling, graphical interface. Our PingPlotter Pro product builds upon the capabilities of PingPlotter Standard with the ability to also give you Jitter, MOS score and even custom calculations via scripts you can write yourself with PingPlotter Pro's built-in scripting capability.

Equity and Bond Trading

Are you an active equity or bond trader looking for an edge? Have you ever been in a situation where your favorite quote program, quote streamer or real-time graph isn't updating (or even working at all), and wondered whether the problem was your Internet connection (and you should contact your ISP), the site that you're connecting to or somewhere in between you and the site? PingPlotter can answer these questions for you, and give you an edge over your fellow traders. While they struggle with the frustration of not knowing why things are running so slow, PingPlotter can give you the information to take action.

In addition to helping you see where problems are that can be influencing your favorite data tools, PingPlotter can also save the savvy trader money. In a business where the delay of the posting of a trade can be very costly, because you made a decision to hit the trade button based on one price, and the price just went up or down significantly before the web site received your trade order because your Internet connection isn't healthy and you didn't know it, a tool like PingPlotter can be invaluable.

Online Gaming

Latency is the bane of online gaming. It is an even bigger problem than bandwidth limitations. Hundreds (if not thousands) of online gamers use PingPlotter every day to troubleshoot poor performance of an online game, either on their own or by posting saved PingPlotter graphs and enlisting the help of fellow gamers that also use PingPlotter.