How to check for Packet Loss (Windows Vista/7/8) and do a Traceroute

In Windows Vista and higher, the excellent Resource Monitor was added, which gives quite detailed accounts of your system's resource usage. And using this tool we can see if your connection to the Path of Exile servers is getting any Packet Loss, which will result in desyncs.

While Path of Exile is running, do the following:

- In the Search Bar, type in "resmon". This should open up the Resource Monitor.

- Switch to the Network tab.

- Expand "TCP Connections".

- Click on the "Image" column to sort the process images (program names) alphabetically.

- Look for "client.exe". There may be multiple instances of this.

You may have to scroll the window over to the right to see the Packet Loss column, which is right next to Latency. You can right-click on columns and select "Hide Column" to get rid of the ones you don't care about.

Note: Packet Loss should be 0%. If it's higher than 0, there may be a problem with your network, and/or the network in-between you and Path of Exile's servers.

If you're experiencing desyncs, most likely either the Packet Loss % will be higher than 0, or your Latency (ms) will be higher than normal.

Until Packet Loss is added in-game, Hardcore League players may even want to run Path of Exile in windowed mode, with the Resource Monitor up beside it.

You can use the "Remote IP" column to get the IP of the Path of Exile server(s) you are connected to. You can then open up Command Prompt and enter in:

tracert IP#

Where IP# is the IP Address of the Path of Exile server you wish to trace. Example of an IP Address: 50.22.247.10

Example of a Traceroute:

> tracert 50.22.247.10
Tracing route to 50.22.247.10-static.reverse.softlayer.com [50.22.247.10]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 262 ms 64 ms 77 ms c-68-49-128-1.hsd1.md.comcast.net [###.###.###.###]
This is my Gateway, from my ISP. It's a local shared hub.

2 94 ms 47 ms 59 ms xe-0-1-0-32767-sur01.longhill.md.bad.comcast.net [###.###.###.###]
This is the ISP's MAN. Metropolitan Area Network, over a city or collection of cities/towns/villages.

3 283 ms 224 ms 214 ms 68.85.115.1
Note the high latency. And note we're not outside our ISP's network yet!

4 21 ms 27 ms 28 ms pos-5-6-0-0-cr01.ashburn.va.ibone.comcast.net [###.###.###.###]
5 14 ms 12 ms 13 ms pos-0-5-0-0-pe01.ashburn.va.ibone.comcast.net [###.###.###.###]
6 13 ms 11 ms 11 ms ae15.bbr02.eq01.wdc02.networklayer.com [###.###.###.###]
This is the target's ISP's network. We're outside of my ISP (Comcast) and onto our target's network (which happens to be SoftLayer).

7 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms ae1.dar01.sr01.wdc01.networklayer.com [###.###.###.###]
8 18 ms 15 ms 23 ms po1.fcr03.sr02.wdc01.networklayer.com [###.###.###.###]
9 13 ms 12 ms 13 ms 50.22.247.10-static.reverse.softlayer.com [###.###.###.###]
This is our target. (It's a SoftLayer datacenter, which GGG uses for PoE.)

Note: If you see an asterisk (*) in a traceroute, that means it didn't get a response. This could mean network problems, or it could mean that node simply doesn't respond to traceroutes.

Note: I had to substitute "[###.###.###.###]" here for actual IPs. Probably because of anti-spam measures on the forums. So don't expect to see "[###.###.###.###]"

Edit: Added traceroute information. Fixed title's grammar & syntax.