Traveling Through a Network

 Ping/Traceroute

 

In computer networks, data gets sent in small blocks known as packets. Each Packet is transmitted individually and may follow a different route to reach the destination. The difference between Ping and traceroute is that Ping is a simple command that tests the reachability of a device in the network and will tell you if the specified server is reachable and how long it will take to send and receive data from the server Vs. On the other hand, Traceroute finds the exact route to reach the server and the time each step (hop) takes. I pinged and traced sites for three countries: the United States, Europe, and Canada. When pinging Google.com, nineteen packets were transmitted in 9.8 ms without fail. When tracing the same website, there were 64 hops to different routers to reach the destination. Round trip time was 5.3 ms.

For this discussion, Traveling Through Ethernet LAN reflection Essay, I would like to describe how the packets travel through the network. First, they travel across the network in packets; This IP packet will have the destination address, and the Packet will have the IP address for the source (ME). Once the Packet is created, it needs to create a frame. The frame passes to the switch and, from the switch, goes to a default gateway. The Gateway opens the frame, then the IP packet, and checks the IP / MAC of the hosts.

Ping and tracert/traceroute are perfect troubleshooting tools. I was a field technician for a long time, and ping is part of my everyday troubleshooting. We usually get calls when the user cannot connect to the internet, and the first thing, I do is ping the host to ensure it is online. A device may not respond due to being turned off, an unplugged ethernet cable, or a deactivated or damaged network jack. Tracert/traceroute we use when users report slowness of a site; we trace the path the packets took as they traveled to the destination. It also displays the times which are the response times that occurred at each stop along the route if there is a connection problem or latency connecting to a site.

-Alberto Jimenez