Troubleshooting lag and network connectivity can be one of the most difficult things tasks for a game admin. Cortex makes this chosre a bit easier by giving you the ability to run simple network diagnostics from any server on your cluster to you or one of your players. Click the Network Tools link in the main menu to load the networking tools page.
The network tools page has three form fields to fill out:
| IP/Hostname |
The IP address or hostname of the computer you want to run tests against. If you want to run tests against your computer you can add your IP address to this field by clicking the link under this form. |
| Server |
Which server in your cluster you want to run tests from. Cortex can run network tests from any server in your cluster, but defaults to the server you're logged into. |
| Test |
Select which test you want to run here. You have your choice of four tests to run:
- ping: Send data 4 times to the test IP and record the time it takes for the server to respond. This test is useful for determining overall network latency. If you see large return values then a connection between your Cortex server and your test computer may be saturated. If you see any timeouts then there may be a physical problem or an issue with one of the pieces of network equipment between your test computer and your Cortex server.
- traceroute: Get a report of the network route from your Cortex server to your test IP. Its best to ignore the response times in a traceroute as many routers assign traceroutes low priority, causing response times to appear larger than they are. Traceroutes are useful for find routing issues from your Cortex server to the system you're testing.
- nslookup: Perform a DNS lookup of a hostname to get its IP address. If you are testing an IP address then nslookup will run a reverse DNS lookup to try to get its PTR hostname. This is a useful network tool, but should not be used to diagnose lag.
- whois: Find out which organization owns an IP address or domain. Like nslookup this isn't a useful lag test, but is nontheless a good way to track an address down.
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After filling out the form click the Continue icon to run the test. Cortex will load the results of the test in a frame in the window and display the results in real-time to your browser. The Continue icon remains on the page in case you want to run the same test again.