Post #4 - Traveling Through a Network

 Part 1: Ping Activity

Website 1 - Since its server is located in the same country, the round-trip time (RTT) is the lowest with the most consistent variation between pings.

Website 2 - Higher RTT could be due to it being international and a longer distance.

Website 3 - Even though it is still considered international, it is still closer than Australia, and Europe is known to have pretty good networking, which probably helped keep the RTT low.

Part 2: Traceroute Activity

Website 1 - With Google traffic staying inside the country, it has low latency

Website 2 - International traffic has to traverse different networks, which could slow things down. The Twelve99 and Cloudflare do a good job of keeping the latency low despite physical distance.

Website 3 - Similar to website 2, it has to traverse different international networks, but Twelve99 and Cloudflare do an excellent job at keeping the latency low. Europe's network architecture could also contribute to the low latency.

Part 3: Traveling Through a Network Reflection Essay

    The ping command sends tiny packets of data to a specific destination (like a website’s IP address). It measures how long it takes for these packets to travel to the destination and back, and that gives you a quick idea of how fast your internet connection is. There are more advanced ‘pings’ that would actually need a handshake with the device before getting a response, like a DICOM ping or echo. You can also run into trouble if the device has ICMP turned off; this will hide the device from your ping request, and you wouldn’t get a return response at all. 

    A traceroute is like a map that shows the entire path a packet takes through the Internet or network. It lists every router it passes through (called a hop), so you can see where it goes. A traceroute can help find out if there are any delays or issues with where you’re trying to go. 

    Ping and traceroute can sometimes run into issues, as stated above. Two possible reasons why a ping request or traceroute command might time out or return with an error response could be firewalls and network security settings that can block traffic, which can cause timeouts. Another problem would be network congestion or a router could be down, any of these would keep the packet from reaching its destination, and thus, no response.

    The location of the server can affect how long it takes for a message to travel through the internet. If the server is far away or there are lots of other devices on the same network, it can take longer for the message to get there. 

Reference:

Learning Platform | CompTIA. (2025). Testout.com. https://labsimapp.testout.com/v6_0_675/index.html/productviewer/1215/3.1/c184ce18-c955-4999-97f7-94b62fb75a43?nonce=CHiufPbbyr4GXgPTvYB9OWOEHnkKSw5mXosqvKd47CM