Traveling Through a Network

Although I do not have any previous experience with website pings and traceroute experience, I found this activity quite interesting. Our text explains packets, and they travel as information such as email messages or webpages that go through different computers via communications links such as fiber optic cables. These packets will travel to a specific destination and back (Vahid & Lysecky, 2017, Sec. 301, para 2). When comparing the three ping operations I completed, one can clearly see a difference in trip times with each ping. Google.com had the shortest trip time whereas the ping to a Japanese as well as a Chinese site took significantly longer. This can be explained by the distances between home and the destinations being pinged. For example, my ping to Google only took an average of 19ms, whereas my ping to 360.cn took 114ms. The difference between trip time occurs because my ping had to travel a much shorter distance as a Google server is much closer. A ping traveling to another country like China or Japan will obviously take longer due to distance. Geographical locations do play a role in trip times. The further away the domain is, the longer the trip time.

Figure 1. Google.com ping example

Figure 2. Google.com traceroute

          When considering ping and traceroute commands, both tools can be helpful when troubleshooting internet problems. If there is an issue with an internet connection, a ping or traceroute command will show a failed result. The ping command results show how many packets were sent and how many were received. If four packets are sent and none come back, this may be a result of a network problem such as a bad communication link or router as this is how packets travel back and forth. Some other reasons for a failed ping or traceroute request could be a site blocking incoming pings or a server being down (Beal, V. 2018). If a site wishes to block incoming pings, the results will show a "request timed out" response, as the loop was not able to be completed. A user would get the same result from a downed server.

References:

Beal, V. (2018) The Difference Between Traceroute and Ping. Retrieved from https://www.webopedia.com

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2017). Computing technology for all. Retrieved from zybooks.zyante.com