Post #4 - Traveling Through a Network

    For this activity, we performed pings and traceroutes utilizing our own computers. This type of action can help with internet connectivity and diagnosing whether an internet connection is strong enough. These types of commands are commonly used to troubleshoot these problems. Pings help to detect the connectivity of a device that is using a particular network. Traceroutes "trace" that connection and determine the path on the way to the destination.

Ping Activity:

The ping activity for my below screenshot is as follows: 

Every ping had these package results; 4 sent, 4 received, and none lost.

Google.com had an average speed of 18ms

Google.jp had an average speed of 45ms

Google.cn had an average speed of 24ms

Traceroute Activity:

The Traceroute activity for my below screenshot is as follows:

Google.com has a total of 2 requests that resulted in unsuccessful hops. There were a total of 13 routers but only 11 of them had successful hops. The speed mirrors our ping test with an average of 18.7ms.

Google.jp ran through 14 different routers and only failed once with an unsuccessful hop. The average time was 24.5ms.

Google.cn has another 14 routers with only one unsuccessful hop and time out. The average time is 19.6ms.

Reflection: 

Computers communicate with the internet, short for inter-networking, using “packets”. These packets hold information in the form of addresses for another computer, data size, or a data point like a message or link. These packers travel across paths called communication links which take them through other routers and computers to reach their destination. The internet exists because of these connections between computers. Through my own ping and traceroute results I can tell that my packets had much further to go when I sent them to Japan versus when I sent them to Canada. Japan has an average time of 24.5ms whereas Canada only had 19.6ms. Due to the many connections that are necessary to get this communication out, there are bound to be busier lines of travel that may cause delays. 

Using ping to identify network issues will help especially if you know your internet speed already. In my above test, it took my ping an average of 18ms to complete. If I was having a slower internet day I could run this test and compare that result to the last time I ran the ping. If the ms are higher then I know there may be an issue with connectivity. We can also test this with traceroute and see if our hops time out or fail. In the above screenshots, it seems normal to have at least a few timed-out hops but not many. Comparatively, one might see many more timeouts on a low connectivity day. 

A reason for a timeout could be a blockage from the destination address that is not allowing the packet to go through. This could be because of an implemented firewall. It is also possible that there is simply a connection problem which is explained above. This could be a result of poor connectivity on the destination or sender end.