Traveling Through a Network

Exploring Packet Journeys

Among the most helpful commands for troubleshooting network connectivity are ping and traceroute. Ping gauges latency by measuring the roundtrip time of packets sent to a destination. Traceroute indicates hops along the path packets take to their destination.

As a ping command is executed, the packets move from the local machine to the destination server via ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol). The reply includes the fact that packets reached the destination by the way back, as well as a delay time. Traceroute uses the Time-To-Live (TTL) parameter to identify the path, thus exposing each intermediate router through which packets travel. Both of them also give out useful data that complement each other: the ping tool only mentions latency but traceroute reveals routing information.

Comparing my results:

1. Ping Results:

-          Google.com: The addresses are routing well, and the server is so close that it takes only an average of 38ms for roundtrip and no packets are lost.

-          Amazon.de: Higher latency, average 125ms which because it’s in Germany, meaning that you are further in terms of physical and network distance.

-          Google.cn: The success of the routing (24ms) which is the shortest time indicates that the website is very close despite being physically in Canada.

2. Traceroute Results:

- Google.com: The route in this case went through 21 hops,

some of which didn't respond, thus leading to the timeouts that were seen.  However, the destination was reachable at different points that experienced comparatively short delays.

- Amazon.de: 24 hops were necessary with significantly timed out hops between 10 and 23.  The last hop with 128 ms was an indication of the longer path effects as well.

- Google.cn: The path involved 22 hops, with some of them

timing out intermittently. These constraints aside, it was a relatively smooth connection with an average delay of 38ms at the last hop.

Conclusion

The results suggest a strong relationship among geography, routing performance, and roundtrip time. The websites that were located closer to the local region (Google.cn) encountered lower latency, while the ones further away (Amazon.de) incurred increased roundtrip times.

It’s good to troubleshoot with Ping and Traceroute commands because these are fundamental in diagnosing any network problems. Two reasons why ping request and traceroute commands might timeout or return with an error response are firewall restrictions and network congestion. Some routers and servers block packets causing timeouts or errors. As well as excessive traffic over, specific hops could be a reason for delays or dropped packets.

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