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Mary's NET11 Blog

This blog is in the form of a 'learning log' for my online studies @ Curtin for NET11.

Module 1: Traceroute and more

Thursday, March 1, 2007

My task today was to find a traceroute tool online, and find out:




  • How many 'hops' are there?

  • What is the average time in milliseconds from the tools site to the curtin server?

  • Find out the IP number of the hostname curtin.edu.au


First I tried the traceroute tool on Central Ops.net and got the following results.





Hops: 18, from theplanet.com [70.84.211.98] to curtin.edu.au [134.7.179.10 ]

Average Time: 246 ms



Next was the traceroute tool on Network Tools.com.





Hops: 16, from ev1servers.net [66.98.241.1] to curtin.edu.au [134.7.179.10]

Average Time: 248 ms





Then I tried a visual traceroute tool from VisualRoute.

Hops: 14, from defenderhosting.com[205.234.111.129] to curtin.edu.au [134.7.179.10]

Average Time: 243 ms



Finally I used the traceroute tool from Software Technology Park of India.





Hops: 18, from white_dwarf.cbbtier3.att.net [12.0.1.1] to curtin.edu.au [134.7.179.10]

Average Time: 292 ms


I found it interesting to note that all 4 traceroute tests went through aarnet.net.au (Sydney, then Melbourne, Adelaide and finally Perth) I'm guessing this was the case as the quickest way to get to Curtin was indeed through the AARNET (Australian's Research and Education Network) routers.

Next I tried traceroute from my own computer to curtin.edu.au

Hops: 15, from my IP address, to curtin.edu.au [134.7.179.10]

Average Time: 58 ms

What I found surprising was that although I live around 200km from Perth where Curtin is situated, it still took 1 more hop than tracing than from VisualRoute, which is based in the USA. However the average time is significantly faster than for any of the other traceroute tests I performed.

I think using traceroute tools would be a great way to pinpoint where a connection problem exists (be it your ISP, the Internet or the website) if you are unable to access a website.

My next task -

  • Ping the webct site and compare the time with the time taken to ping from the net tools site. Is it less or more than you expected?

Well I pinged the webct.curtin.edu.au site from my computer and got the following results -

5 pings, all 1049586 ms.

I tried pinging the webct.curtin.edu.au site from Net Tools.com, but all I got was 10 timeouts...

- Mary

References

Hexillion Technologies. (2004). Free online network utilities. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from http://centralops.net/asp/co/Traceroute.vbs.asp

Software Technology Parks of India, U.P. (n.d.). NOC tools. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from http://lucknow.stpi.in/tools/trace.pl

The Keyword Factory LLC. (2007). Network-Tools.com. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from http://network-tools.com/

Visualware Inc. (2007). VisualRoute. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from http://visualroute.visualware.com/

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