Traveling Through a Network

Based on your use of the ping and traceroute commands, we were intended to investigate and describe how packets go over the network in week 4 of TEC 101 Foundations of Information Technology & Literacy. Explain how the pathways to the various destinations vary by comparing the ping and traceroute statistics from the various websites. Draw a conclusion regarding the connection between the roundtrip time and location.

Ping Activity: 

Google: https://www.google.com/
Number of packets sent:4
Received:4
lost:0
the range of response speeds: 24ms

Uk Gov: www.gov.uk/

Number of packets sent:4

Received:4

lost:0

the range of response speeds:26ms

Kpop merch shop : www.weverseshop.io

Number of packets sent:4

Received:4

lost:0

the range of response speeds:4ms

Traceroute Activity

Google: https://www.google.com/

how many routers it passes through:12

how long it takes to hop from router to router:15ms

if it fails before reaching its destination:Nope

Uk Gov: www.gov.uk/

how many routers it passes through:7

how long it takes to hop from router to router:16ms

if it fails before reaching its destination:yes

Kpop merch shop : www.weverseshop.io

how many routers it passes through:21

how long it takes to hop from router to router:13ms

if it fails before reaching its destination: yes

Traveling Through a Network Reflection

My experiences with ping on my Apple Macbook were a nightmare because I had anticipated that the process would finish in 5 minutes or less, but it continued to ping the website for 30 minutes. But, when I checked it again on another laptop window, it worked and finished in three minutes. I have no idea why I was unable to use the ping command on my MacBook. However when I used the traceroute command, I had no problems. I won't lie; I still struggle to read commands, understand what each line means, and fully comprehend what the traceroute command performs.

According to an article in the Washington Post, it illustrates how pockets move throughout the network "Data on the Internet is divided into units called packets to make it function. Each packet then makes a series of hops via the network."(Gamio, 2015). When a packet is received by a router, it is first sent to the data link layer, then to the IP layer, where the router uses the forwarding table to identify the next hop for the packet.

Pinging the 3 different websites produced remarkably identical results. Other than the greater average time, there weren't many differences. The UK website took the longest, followed by Google, then the Korean website. Yet, none of the three websites lost any packets.Google was the only page that didn't fail and took the fastest, and when I ran the traceroute command, I saw that the two websites that weren't US bases both failed to come back a couple of times.which makes me believe the response time is typically longer than the actual travel distance to the destination. The physical distance that data must travel over the network before it reaches its destination determines packet latency.

Ping is a basic command that can check whether a device is reachable on the network. You can "track" a packet's route to its destination by using the command "traceroute." It is helpful for locating latency issues, locating connection failures, and tracing network issues.(Kaczanowski, 2021) So by following the path of the packets being transmitted to identify the source of the issue, the ping and traceroute commands can be used to diagnose issues with internet connections. "A computer interacts via the Internet by delivering a packet, containing information such as an address for a destination computer, the data size, and the data itself (email message, web page, piece of video, etc.)," as mentioned in chapter  3.(Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. ,2019).

References

Gamio. (2015, May 31). How data travels across the Internet. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/security-of-the-internet/bgp/#:~:text=confirming%20successful%20delivery.-,The%20Internet%20works%20by%20chopping%20data%20into%20chunks%20called%20packets,in%20a%20series%20of%20hops.&text=Entering%20the%20network-,Each%20packet%20hops%20to%20a%20local%20Internet%20service%20provider%20(ISP,network%20%E2%80%93%20usually%20for%20a%20fee

Kaczanowski. (2021, October 4). How to Use the Traceroute and Ping Commands to Troubleshoot Network Connectivity Issues. https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/traceroute-and-ping/#:~:text=Ping%20is%20a%20simple%20command,and%20tracking%20down%20latency%20problems

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