I used the ping an traceroute commands directly from the Terminal utility app on my Mac Pro. The first thing I noticed between the two is that the Ping command sends 56-byte packets, while Traceroute command sends 52-byte packets. I also found that a few of these websites I pinged had multiple IP addresses returned from the DNS lookup that occurs when the Ping command is executed. It appears that the Ping command selects only of the IP addresses returned to send the packets to. This is also true for the Traceroute command.
I pinged google.com, gov.au, amazon.co.jp, and china.org.cn. In all cases, the Ping command sent away a 54-byte packet and received multiple 64-byte packets in return. The fastest to return the packets was gov.au with a TTL of 58 and an average time of 9 ms. The slowest to return packets was amazon.co.jp with a TTL of 226 and an average time of 48 ms. None of the pings timed out, but I did interrupt the command after ten packets returned.
I used Traceroute for google.com, gov.au, and amazon.co.jp. In all cases, the command did not finish tracing to the final server and instead returned * * * where traffic or an unresponsive router was encountered. The trace of google.com made it the furthest with 15 hops, whereas the trace of gov.au only made it to 5 hops.
Both Traceroute and Ping are useful commands to help network engineers and other home users troubleshoot issues on their respective networks. The ping command is simple and only tells you if a server or computer is accessible/visible from the pinging location. The traceroute command provides more detail as it outlines the path a packet takes to get to the final IP address. In some cases, it is helpful to perform a reverse trace to see if there are network issues encountered when the data packet is being returned.
A ping or traceroute command may time out when a router or computer is unavailable. This could mean that it is offline, or that it could be overloaded with traffic.
Hi Hugo,
ReplyDeleteI didn't include it in my essay, but I also ran into issues with the traceroute with certain websites not completing. I wanted to include a complete one in mine so I changed up which sites I was using in order to try and evaluate a completed traceroute, but after reading yours, I think including one that doesn't complete shows how they can be such a useful tool for troubleshooting. After all, that's why we do them. The only recommendation that I have for you before posting your blog would be to consider increasing the resolution on your screenshots. That said, I do think the layout makes it much easier for scrolling through the post and viewing them side by side. Perhaps the blog would include a "click to expand" feature or something like that.
Either way, your post was a great read!