Reading results — the basics

Color and icon mean the same thing everywhere (and never rely on color alone — there's always a label):

• Green / ✓ = good (reachable, success, valid).
• Amber / ⚠ = degraded (partial loss, a warning).
• Red / ✕ = failed (unreachable, error, expired).

Common terms:

• RTT (round-trip time) — how long a reply took, in ms. Lower is better.
• Loss % — how many probes got no answer. 0% is healthy; steady loss points to a real problem.
• Timeout vs unreachable — "timeout" means no answer came back (could be a firewall silently dropping, or the host is down); "unreachable" means the network actively said it couldn't deliver.

IPv4 vs IPv6: many hosts have both. A name like google.com may answer on IPv6 even when IPv4 to a public address is filtered. The path tools let you force IPv4 or IPv6 so you can prove which one works.