Post #4 Traveling Through A Network

  

Hello Everyone,

I learned how to Ping and Traceroute commands for this week's discussion. The ping command is usually used to see if a website or device is down or how quickly you can access it. The traceroute command maps and helps us see the path of the packets through the network as it tries to reach the destination.

Ping Activity

Since I am running a Windows 10 computer, I first click on the start menu and type in cmd to open up the command prompt. From here, I typed in ping google.com, which these are the results.

This shows that I could communicate with google without any issues with the average speed of 31ms. Next, I wanted to ping a domain outside of the U.S. and look at the results.

I was able to ping amazon.co.uk with an average of 150ms. Next, I ping an Iceland website guidetoiceland.is which I was able to communicate with on an average of 21ms.

Traceroute Activity

My next activity was to use the traceroute command to the same domains I pinged and see if I was able to see the path of my packets through the network.

The path of my packets shows that it first went through my router, then my internet service provider, then hopped around to different servers to finally get to google. My packet request timed out several times as I suspect I may have hit a firewall to protect companies from getting hit with a DOS attack or the server is down. Next, I wanted to use the traceroute command to the two domains outside the U.S.

For my traceroute command I sent to the U.K., I was able to reach an Amazon server before it timed out. To see if the website was down, I opened it and confirmed I could navigate to the website just fine, so I assumed it hit a firewall once again. For my traceroute command I sent to Iceland, I reached a server, but with the roundtrip response of 25ms, I figured there was a chance the server was nearby or in the U.S.

Through my findings from this experience, I can use these commands in my professional life. I regularly use the ping command at work to see if a device is on campus and online. Using this command, I know how to approach my troubleshooting steps with a user or engage with the server team to see if any of our servers are having issues.

Reference

Vahid, F., Lysecky, S. (2019). Computing technology for all. https://learn.zybooks.com/zybook/TEC101:_Fundamentals_of_Information_Technology &_Literacy_(TED2227A)

Internet-class (June 1, 2015). Ping and TRACERT (traceroute) networking commands [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJV-GBZ6PeM