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Beyond Hop-by-Hop Path Analysis: The Missing Layer in Modern Network Observability
Thiyagu Ganesan
Posted: Dec 5, 2025
Table of Contents
The Invisible Problem that Kills Application Experience
Every engineer has lived this moment:
The dashboard says, "All green". The devices say “Healthy.” The tunnels say “Up”. But the application team says, “The network is slow — again”.
You run a traceroute. You run pings. You check SNMP counters. Everything looks fine.
But something between hop 4 and hop 7 is degrading your entire application experience — and you simply can’t see it.
Why Traditional Tools Fail Today
Why can’t you see it? Because traditional observability wasn’t built for the networks we operate today.
Modern, cloud-first networks introduce invisible behaviours that no classic tool can capture:
SD-WAN overlays and encrypted tunnels.
Multi-cloud and Cloud-region transitions.
Carrier middle miles and ISP handoffs.
The issues now occur in the “Invisible Middle”, where most performance degradation happens: ISP → Carrier transitions, Cloud backbone congestion, silent drops on intermediate hops, and peering imbalances. None of these show up on traditional dashboards, forcing engineers to troubleshoot blindfolded.
Trace-route and RTT Are Not Observability
Traditional tools are fundamentally flawed in these environments:
Traceroute is a “best guess,” not an observability tool. Hops disappear behind overlays, asymmetric routing breaks interpretation, and silent packet drops go undetected.
Traditional monitoring is equally insufficient. Round-Trip Time (RTT) doesn’t tell you where latency occurs. Tunnel “up” doesn’t guarantee the underlay is stable. You see the endpoints, but not the journey. And the journey is where everything breaks.
Hop-by-Hop (HBH) Path Analysis
Hop-by-Hop (HBH) Path Analysis is the missing layer because it reveals the truth about the path, not just the endpoints. HBH transforms troubleshooting from: “Something is wrong somewhere,” into: “Hop 6 → 7 introduces inconsistent jitter patterns at 14:20 UTC”.
A full HBH model captures deep directional path intelligence by tracking:
Latency per hop (Find exactly where latency originates).
Loss per hop (Catch silent packet drops on middle hops).
Jitter per hop (Identify microbursts and instability zones).
Forward & reverse path differences (This solves 80% of “ghost issues”).
MTU reveal & fragmentation detection.
You can explore how Ticvic has applied such solution as part of its SDWAN platform.
Visit website: https://ticvic.com/case-studies/design-and-development-of-ai-enabled-sdwan-and-sase-platform
The Phantom Issue: Asymmetric Routing
Asymmetric routing is a prime example of a “phantom” issue where traditional tools fail. This often leads to the problem: “One direction is perfect, the other direction is degraded”.
Only HBH can expose these mismatches.
Anatomy of a Phantom Outage
The “Phantom” Outage (Asymmetric Routing)
Why standard monitoring (Ping/RTT) fails to detect directional issues. This illustrates the “Anatomy of a Phantom Outage” section.

HBH Architecture at Scale
Modern HBH Architecture: From Probes to Predictive Insights

Quantified Results: From Reactive to Predictive Operations
Tracking HBH behaviour over time transforms the network from a mystery into a behavioural system with predictable patterns.
By combining HBH data (like per-hop latency and jitter) with AI — the same approach we utilize in our engineering projects (like PathiQ) — you move from reactive troubleshooting to predictive operations.
HBH unlocks:
Precision RCA.
Predictive risk scoring (e.g., predicting link degradation).
Autonomous routing (e.g., steering traffic proactively).
Smoother multi-cloud connectivity.
This architecture — moving from Telemetry → Analysis → Time-Series Intelligence → AI → Insights — is the new core of cloud-scale troubleshooting. Traditional monitoring shows symptoms while HBH shows causes.
Also, You can find detailed information on the real-world implementation of PathMetrics — Predictive Observability Platform.
Visit website: https://ticvic.com/case-studies/ai-that-sees-ahead-enabling-predictive-observability-with-pathmetrics
If your observability stops at RTT, CPU, tunnel status, and throughput, you’re only watching the “surface health” of the network. The real source of performance issues is in the dynamic behaviour of the path.
Don’t wait for the next application team escalation.
We have built Hop-by-Hop Path Analysis into the core of SD-WAN, SASE, and Observability platforms for leading enterprises. If your team needs to transform blind troubleshooting into precision RCA and predictive risk scoring, our engineering capability is ready to deploy this intelligence at platform scale.
Contact Ticvic to see how HBH + AI can eliminate your middle-mile blind spots.
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