I am still blown away by the good old tools people use today to be on top of their problems, I recently had a call with an engineer that shared with me his go to tool for network trouble shooting: the faithful PinPlotter. He was using this tool to find a problem in him on prem to cloud issue; a problem that eluded him for days. 

Hearing this I thought to write this article:

Where PingPlotter Still Makes Sense

PingPlotter remains a robust, time-tested tool for general network diagnostics — and for many use-cases, it’s simpler and more than sufficient:

• Simplicity and wide applicability — It’s easy to deploy, supports desktop (single machine) or cloud-based monitoring, works for home networks, offices, remote-work teams, VoIP / video calls, gaming, general connectivity issues.
• Hop-by-hop diagnostics & network path visualization – Great for diagnosing where in the network path latency or packet loss occurs (ISP, router, inter-ISP link, etc.), which helps for routing/performance issues.
• Lower cost and lighter footprint for small or non-media workloads – If you don’t need video-aware observability – say you just need to maintain stable VPN, web services, VoIP calls or standard data traffic – PingPlotter may be more cost-effective and easier to manage than a media-focused suite.
• Good for cross‐company or end-user support scenarios – When supporting remote users (employees, clients), PingPlotter’s ease of deployment, remote/cloud-agent support, and simple metrics make it very practical.

As an engineer/professional evaluating your next robust delivery context, you need a more professional tool to cover PingPlotter limitation:

• Traffic-aware observability – your traffic isn’t just a ping/traceroute tool: it is made of user, application and UDP/TCP transport protocols that have to deal with network changes. You need to track flows, correlates network events to transport events (packet loss, Error rate, jitter, bitrate changes, buffer requirements, and transport stream behavior).
• Deeper insight for live traffic – You must be on top of a finer granularity; detect network anomalies that specifically your transport (packet loss, jitter, latency, but in the context, for example video delivery constraints) – which a generic tool might miss or treat as generic network noise.
• End-to-end observability across dynamic paths – In today internet or cloud-based delivery, paths may change, routes may shift, and content flows may cross multiple domains. Static ICMP/Traceroute is too static, you need a tool that is designed for “path discovery and analysis,” giving visibility across the full chain.
• Delivery SLA & reliability focus – For a broadcaster or streaming service, ensuring uptime and quality for live video is critical. Your tool must support that mission: alerting, root-cause analysis tailored for fast root cause analysis, ability to catch issues proactively before they impact viewers.
• Designed for scale and complexity of broadcast workflows – As noted by the vendor and clients, your tool must be able to handle many simultaneous streams / flows, cloud streaming workflows, and media-specific network behaviors — not just generic connectivity.

If you are running live video distribution (SRT/RTMP/other streaming protocols), multi-region or cloud-backed, or delivering at scale – AlvaLinks CloudRider is very likely to provide insight beyond what a generic tool offers.

But if you are OK with small scale deployment and ready to work the plots and logs to find your problem – stay with PingPlotter.

Cheap is always a good alternative, but are you whiling to pay for lost time ?