Ping and Traceroute Discussion
When you browse the web, your computer sends and receives data in small bundles called packets that travel between your machine and a remote server. Two common tools for examining how these packets move across networks are ping and traceroute. In this post, I will share my experiences using these commands with three websites, Google.com (U.S.), Amazon.co.uk (U.K.), and Amazon.co.jp (Japan), and discuss how distance and routing paths can affect the speed and success of these connections.
Ping & Traceroute
Ping: This command uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) to send a small packet of data to a target host and measures how long it takes for the “echo reply” to return. Ping is ideal for a quick check to see whether a website or server is reachable and to measure round-trip time (RTT).
Traceroute: This command traces the path that a packet takes from your computer to the target host, revealing each "hop" through routers along the way. It can show the geographic and network route taken, as well as any points where the data might be delayed or dropped.
Google PING:When pinging Google.com, the round-trip time was typically much faster than it was for the international websites. This is likely because Google’s data centers are geographically closer (within the United States), and the route requires fewer hops, which translates to reduced latency.
Based on these results, I noticed that the further away the test has to reach out, the longer it takes. I noticed this, especially with the UK and Japanese versions of Amazon compared to the ping and traceroute with Google. Pinging or tracing a US website such as Google will almost always be faster than with an international website, mostly due to the difference in the number of hops. For example, the Amazon.co.jp and amazon.co.uk traceroutes had 21 hops and 30 hops, respectively. On the other hand, the Google.com traceroute only had 12 hops to make. For both international tests, I noticed my connection went through Pima, AZ to southern California before moving on internationally.
During these tests, I saw several request timed-out responses; I think these occurred because the networking devices in each timed-out hop did not provide a response. This could be due to security features on those devices or them simply not being set to respond. This can make things tricky when trying to troubleshoot network connection issues, as a request time out doesn’t give us any helpful information. I feel like traceroutes are helpful when something isn’t connecting to narrow down where the connection is failing. Pings are probably more helpful when trying to determine if something is able to connect, rather than why it has an issue with connecting.
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