Learning my way through the expansive internet landscape

    After using the ping and traceroute commands, I got to see how information (called packets) travels through the internet. When you visit a website, your computer sends packets to that site’s server. These packets go through many different points, called routers, to get there and come back. The ping command checks how long this trip takes and if any packets get lost. The traceroute command shows each step the packet takes, kind of like a map of its journey.

    I tested three websites: google.com, nintendo.co.jp, and gov.uk. The ping to Google showed very fast times, between 14ms and 19ms, with an average of 16ms. This means the data got to Google and back very quickly. The ping to nintendo.co.jp (in Japan) was a little slower, with times between 14ms and 17ms, and an average of 15ms, which is still fast. The ping to gov.uk (in the UK) had the highest times, between 17ms and 31ms, with an average of 21ms. All three tests had 0% packet loss, which means no data was lost in the process.

    Traceroute showed more details. The route to Google passed through 12 routers before some hops timed out, but it still reached the destination. Nintendo’s route had more timeouts after about the 6th hop, but the trace still completed successfully. This may be because some routers block traceroute requests for security. The path to gov.uk was the shortest, with only 8 hops, and it didn’t time out at all. Based on these results, I saw that geographic location can affect how long it takes for data to travel. Google and Nintendo had short response times, likely because of local or fast servers, while the UK server took a bit longer.

    Ping and traceroute are great tools for fixing internet problems. If a website isn’t working or is super slow, ping can show if packets are being delayed or lost. Traceroute helps by showing where the issue is happening—maybe a router is slow or not working at all. A ping or traceroute might time out if a router blocks the request or if a server is too busy or offline. These tools help you figure out what’s wrong and where the problem is happening in the network.