Traveling Through a Network

Post #4 - Travelling Through a Network:
A Reflection

🌐 Tracking Data Across the Internet: What Ping and Traceroute Taught Me

    Over the course of one week, I got to explore how information travels across the internet using two built-in tools: ping and traceroute. I had used the internet every day without thinking much about how data actually moves from my computer to a website and back. This assignment changed that.

📶 What Ping and Traceroute Do

    Ping checks whether a server is reachable and how long it takes for a small data packet to make a round trip from my computer to that server and back. If the server is online and responding, ping shows how fast the connection is.

    Traceroute shows the exact path that data takes to reach a destination. It lists each "hop" the packet goes through, such as routers and switches, across different networks until it gets to the final server. This is useful to see where delays or blocks might be happening.

🌍 My Test Sites

To test both commands, I chose three different websites:

• Google – A site that likely connects to a local server.

• Linode (London) – A server based in the UK.

• University of Sydney – A site hosted in Australia.

📊 Ping Results

Ping revealed some clear differences in response time:

• Google responded almost instantly. This made sense, since Google has data centers nearby.
  
  
• Linode had a slightly longer delay. It’s based in the UK, so the added distance showed up in the timing.
  
  
• University of Sydney had the highest round-trip time. Australia is far from my location in the US, so the longer time was expected.

I noticed that some sites returned errors or “Request Timed Out” messages. This usually means the server is set up to block ping requests, not that the connection is broken.

🧭 Traceroute Results

    Traceroute gave a detailed look at how many network devices the data passed through before reaching each site.

• Google had the fewest hops, and the timing was fast at every step.
  
  

• Linode showed a longer path with more noticeable delays.
  
  

• University of Sydney included international hops and multiple timeouts, likely from routers that don’t respond to traceroute requests.

This helped confirm that geographic distance and the complexity of the network path both affect performance.

🛠️ Why This Matters

    From this experience, I learned that the round-trip time usually increases with geographical distance, but not always in a straight line. The specific network route and the responsiveness of each router along the way also play a big role.

🧪 Using Ping and Traceroute for Troubleshooting

Both commands are helpful for identifying network problems:

• Ping helps test if a server is reachable and if data is getting through at all.
  
  
• Traceroute helps identify where slowdowns or failures are occurring.

🚫 Two Reasons a Ping or Traceroute Might Fail

1. Firewalls or security settings may block ping or traceroute traffic.
   
   
2. Routers may ignore requests if they are too busy or configured not to respond to ICMP packets.
   
   

I ran into both of these during my test. Some routers in the traceroute path simply timed out, even though the overall connection still worked fine.

✅ Conclusion

    Using ping and traceroute gave me a better understanding of how the internet functions behind the scenes. These tools help explain why some websites load faster than others and where problems might be happening when your connection feels slow. While I’m not a network technician, this assignment made me feel more confident in reading basic connection data and understanding where issues might be coming from.

💻Screenshots

Google Ping

Linode Ping

University of Sydney, Australia Ping

Google Traceroute

Linode Traceroute

University of Sydney, Australia Traceroute