[e2e] Analysis of Traceroute

[Manjunath D]

Hi,

Could you please help me understand the output of the following traceroute
output. ?

a) My point of doubt is that from the 2nd hop the packets are hitting the
same host (203.200.10.209)
and as you can see, this repeats intermittenly for the other following hops.

(a.1) How can the packets travel back to the same host again?
(a.2) Does this indicate there was a loop formed (due to router fault?).
(a.3) or Worse, is this a bug in Solaris 10 version of traceroute utility?

b) what does !H indicate in the hop output?


My System:> Solaris 10 on Sparc


Thanks
>> Manjunath

================================================ Traceroute - capture
-Start  =======================
traceroute 198.133.219.25
traceroute to 198.133.219.25 (198.133.219.25), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  fire.mycompany.com (192.168.3.1)  1.071 ms  0.443 ms  0.323 ms
 2  203.200.10.209 (203.200.10.209)  1.662 ms  1.716 ms  1.538 ms
 3  * * *
 4  * 203.200.10.209 (203.200.10.209)  1.794 ms !H *
 5  * * *
 6  * * *
 7  * * *
 8  203.200.10.209 (203.200.10.209)  2.678 ms !H * *
 9  * 203.200.10.209 (203.200.10.209)  2.548 ms !H *
10  * * *
11  * * 203.200.10.209 (203.200.10.209)  1.937 ms !H
12  * * *

================================================ Traceroute - capture - End
=======================
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