Traceroute star indication * ? 1

[migueljr3]

Good Evening,

I understand that ICMP messages when gone through a traceroute may not always relay back the same route.
My question as a Network Operations Associate is lets say
I have a running path to a network device that is in pretty
much in at hardly no latency (speed/bandwidth) generating reasonable responses that gets polled to our Management Server for SNMP requests/replies.
The problem is sometimes our main t-1 to that specific network and directly connected networks, flaps and certain devices do not get polled in time( OpenView)
In other words we get blinded for a while and we can't see it. The traceroute utility comes in handed if lets say theres is a true outage located at another router/switch.
That taking in mind that the prime t-1 is not flapping, so the connection is pretty much at handshake.
When I do a traceroute to a specific device that does alarm in these instances I get reasonable results(device is up) but I notice I always get a * at the last hop, second packet space turnaround.
Anyone know why?
Example: (ip's have been changed)

Tracing the route to hee-bigguns-rtr1.mni.tennserv.com (1.1.1.5)
>
> 1 abc-105-rtr1-e0-0.mns.yomama.com (1.1.1.1) 0 msec 31 msec 6 msec
> 2 def-3ef-rtr1-s1-0.mns.isfat.com (1.1.6.25) 37 msec 63 msec 37 msec
> 3 ghi-lom-rtr1-s1.mns.scoobydoo.com (1.1.1.1) 68 msec * 68 msec

Why do I get that annoying star?

 

[jeter]

The * should indicate that there are no more responding routes to your trace. Jeter@LasVegas.com
J.Fisher CCNA

 

[migueljr3]

So in other words, it's pretty much the last call on that route(net device)and the ending?