Running Through The Network

      Ping and Tracert commands provide for an interesting exercise to learn about how data packets run through the internet.  If you are having issues getting to a certain website, the first step would be to PING to see if the website is actually reachable.  It will tell you if it is reachable or not.  If it is not reachable, you can then try traceroute to see where the breakdown may be.  It was interesting in my test cases above that the time (in MS) was extremely longer to get to the .jp site than the more local Google site and the disparity got longer as the number of hops increased.  It was also interesting to me that of the four or five traceroutes I tried to international sites, the only one that I could get any data to or from was the tokyodisneyresorts.jp.  I also tried a number of sites in Australia and Canada and was not able to get to them.  The network connection in this hotel I am at this week is not the strongest and may have contributed to this issue but not 100% sure.  While traceroutes are helpful, they may not always tell the entire story of why packets are not getting where they are supposed to.  Sometimes traceroute will break or not return the desired results due to a firewall or incorrectly configured ports on the receiving computer.  All in all, both the PING and Traceroute (Tracepath on ChromeOS) are useful as basic commands for troubleshooting networks.   

Ping  

 

The ping to Google.com returned a response in the 13-14 MS range which is relatively fast in comparison to the other domains.   

 

I was having issues getting out to foreign domains (I think due to the weak hotel internet) so I pinged statewarshockey instead since we are here at their tournament in Detroit, MI this week.  Their response time was significantly longer than Googles.   

 

The only international domain I was able to get to was tokyodisneyresort.jp.  I was unable to get a response time from them due to packet filtering.   

 

 

 

TRACEROUTE (TRACEPATH on ChromeOS) 

 

Cont’d 

 

The Tracepath to google.com ended up as too many hops. 

I did a tracepath to statewarshockey.com because that’s where I am this week at the International Roller Hockey Championships in Detroit, MI. (Also, I was having a hard time trying to ping and tracepath to foreign domains from this hotel connection) 

 

Cont’d 

 

Also, too many hops for statewarshockey.com 

 

 

Cont’d 

 

Interestingly enough, the furthest domain (Japan) made it 19 hops while the local ones (US) only made it 7 and 12 hops respectively.  

 

 

Reference: 

Kaczanowski, M. (2021, October 5). How to Use the Traceroute and Ping Commands to Troubleshoot Network Connectivity Issues. freeCodeCamp.Org. https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/traceroute-and-ping/#:%7E:text=In%20summary%2C%20ping%20is%20a,helpful%20when%20troubleshooting%20network%20connectivity. 

 

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2019). Computing technology for all. zyBooks.