For this week's exercise, I explored using the ping and traceroute commands to explore how data travels through a network.
Ping
Beginning the exercise with the ping command, I opened up the Command Prompt and pinged Google.com as the instructions stated. Here are my results:
The ping attempt was successful, with no packets lost, a minimum response time of 24ms, a maximum response time of 42ms, and an average response time of 28ms. This makes sense, as Google is one of the largest websites in the world, so its bandwidth would have to be pretty huge and they have a data center conveniently located near me, in Los Angeles California.
Next, I chose to ping Runescape.com, the website for the MMO I talked about during last week's discussion whose servers are located in the United Kingdom. Finally, I pinged Konami.com, the website of a game publisher based in Japan.
Runescape.com was a bit slower than Google since it had further to travel, but Konami was far slower than either of them, likely because the packets have to travel not only over a longer distance but through several more network nodes, as I am about to go over.
Traceroute
Next, I executed the traceroute command to gather data on the route that the data takes along the network. First with Google, then Runescape, then finally with Konami.
I noticed that in all three cases, the first attempt timed out, the second had a spotty connection, and then the third onward connected just fine. The ping of each website also seemed to correlate positively to the number of nodes the data packets had to travel between, with Google and Jagex being similar, and Konami's having to travel through three additional nodes to reach the final site. The 'lax' prefix that the server name for Google.com begins with seems to also confirm my suspicions that it connected so quickly because I'm connecting to their Los Angeles data center, which is close by.
I'm sure if anyone here is experienced with network traffic, my traceroute results look a little off. You would be right, because I use a VPN, which passes all of my data through a network client which encrypts my data and obfuscates the IP address of my ISP, home network, and computer. Knowing this, I conducted a test without the VPN on, and I obtained similar results to everyone else here. (Please don't use my post to dox or harass me).
I noticed that I immediately connected to my router, which passes the data to my modem, which then connects to my ISP, which then routes my data to a couple more locations before connecting to the series of 5 servers that end in Konami's website, resulting in two fewer hops overall. Based on these results, it seems that my VPN actually does spoof my IP address for both incoming and outgoing network traffic and that I might want to consider looking into replacing my router, as even though I'm connected to it via Ethernet, it's still dropping the ball when it comes to transferring data to my modem, as evidenced by the fact that it's timing out and dropping packets during the first two connections.
Closing thoughts
Using Pings and Traceroutes to diagnose internet connection issues can help you figure out exactly where in your connection the issue is occurring. Maybe your ISP is experiencing an outage, maybe you need to troubleshoot your router like me, or maybe your modem is on the fritz; where exactly in the traceroute the data fails to transmit can tell you exactly which component of the network is causing the problem. When the connection times out, it may be an issue with your hardware, and when the connection is inconsistent, it can cause packets to be dropped. Sometimes, incorrectly configured network connections can return an error message saying that the connection was refused, meaning that it's not an issue of hardware, but of configuration.
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