Post #4: Traveling Through a Network

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Running the ping and traceroute commands helped me better understand how information travels across the internet. These tools show how fast my computer can reach a website and the path that data takes to get there. When I tested websites like Google and Amazon UK, the results reflected the impact of distance and routing.

Google had the fastest ping result with an average response time of 22 milliseconds, while Amazon UK was much slower with an average of 126 milliseconds. This difference makes sense because Google likely has a server closer to my physical location in the United States, while Amazon UK's traffic has to travel farther, possibly across the ocean, adding more delays and "hops" in the process.

Traceroute provided a detailed map of each step the data made to reach the destination. These steps, called hops, represent routers between my device and the website's server. The traceroute to Google showed consistent hops with low response times, and a few timed out near the end, which is not uncommon. Traceroute to Amazon UK showed more hops overall, and the delays became greater once the route entered international networks. Even with some timeouts, both traces successfully reached their destinations.

These tools confirmed that geographical distance plays a significant role in connection speed. Websites that are physically farther away usually take longer to reach because the data passes through more routers, possibly even crossing borders or undersea cables.

Ping and traceroute are also valuable for troubleshooting. If a website isn't loading, ping helps confirm whether the server is reachable, while traceroute can show exactly where delays or failures are happening along the path. You can often identify which point in the network is causing issues.

There are two common reasons these commands may timeout or fail. One is that a router or firewall may block ping or traceroute requests to improve security. The second is network congestion or equipment issues that cause delays or dropped packets.

Overall, these simple commands gave me a clearer picture of how the internet works behind the scenes. I now have a better understanding of how to investigate network slowdowns and spot where problems might begin when a connection isn't performing as expected. According to Candela et al. (2018), tools like traceroute, when paired with visualization systems, provide a better understanding of routing dynamics, helping identify outages, network congestion, and routing anomalies effectively.







Reference

Candela, M., Di Bartolomeo, M., Di Battista, G., & Squarcella, C. (2018). Radian: Visual Exploration of Traceroutes. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 24(7), 2194–2203. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7953527

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