Post #4 - Traveling Through a Network

 

This was an interesting activity that I have never done before. I always knew things were transmitted and received when you try to access websites on the internet. I did not know however that you can see what is sent and received. When items are transmitted and received via the internet, they are called packets.

Ping is when small packets are sent out and a response is sent back to the recipient. This helps you to determine if something is delivering properly. Using ping will allow you to see the transmission and receipts in addition to how quickly it travels back and forth. Traceroute on the other hand sends small packets out to a certain IP and documents each IP it travels too and how fast it gets back to you on its journey.  Traceroute provides a more in-depth overview of the packets and their travel route.

I chose to use News.Com.Au and Mainichi.jp as the two websites when utilizing ping and traceroute. When I used ping, the results were extremely similar 4 packets were sent and 4 packets were received. The Japan website had faster results but overall, they did not have any timeouts or issues when using ping. I believe the website from Japan worked faster due to it being closer to Arizona. Australia is much farther than Japan from me.        

I used the same websites for traceroute and found similar timeout patterns but on different steps. I noticed that once again the Japan website had much faster results than the Australian one however Japan had 5 request timeouts while Australia had 3 timeouts. The timeouts mean that a response was not received and may have not arrived at the destination.

If you are having issues accessing a website, you can use ping to see if there is an issue sending the packet out of receiving the packet back. If you find a timeout, then you can use Traceroute to see exactly what IP address is having the issue. This can be due to a network connection on your end or the websites end. Additionally, it could be a firewall issues that is stopping the transmissions to send out or receive back.