INTERNET TOOLS

The aim of this exercise was to show the number of “hops” (servers/stopping points) that a packet of information goes through to get from one point to another. The number of hops will be different for each machine, and will often be different each time the tracing is run, depending on the route that the information takes to get from point A to point B.

Starting at “centralops.net [70.84.211.98]” and tracing the route to “curtin.edu.au [134.7.179.53]” took a total of 21 hops when I did it. By averaging out the total time for each hop using mean averages, the total amount of time taken to get from centralops.net to curtin.edu.au was 2051.93ms (2.052 seconds). Therefore the average time in milliseconds from the tools site to the Curtin server was 97.71ms (mean), 0ms (mode) and 46ms (median).


Initially I couldn’t work out why there were three columns for the rtt. I knew that was the return travel time, but I didn’t know why there were three. One of the sites I looked at (A graphic traceroute program)showed four columns (Min, Avg, Max, Cur), so I tried to work out if there were Min, Max and Avg columns, but the figures didn’t seem to fit this explanation. So I googled again and found another Using Traceroute site, which gave me a better explanation, even though the example I read was from a Unix trace.

One thing I did notice too was that the length of time taken for the rtt increased greatly once the route was being traced through Australia rather than the US.