Module 1: Further Exploration

Today I decided to have a bit of a play and compare the results I obtained through 3 different sites and traceroute pathways. I was unsure what to expect in terms of consistency in hop numbers and time to achieve the trace. I guess a part of me figured it would all be pretty similar, after all, it's all from my one little computer to the same Curtin website, right? Wrong! The tracers I chose to use were from network tools, the A-Toolbar and the direct traceroute from my windows c: prompt (as pictured).

I was actually quite suprised by the results and the way there seemed to be no real pattern in the motions. The network tools tracer had the most hops with 20 but was second fastest on 271m/s. The A-Toolbar was by far the fastest taking only 102m/s to complete 15 hops and my c: prompt trace was almost painfully slow taking 595m/s to also finish in 15 hops. The logical part of my brain figured that the less hops the faster the process would be but this little experiment showed me that my suppositions are not always right, and has motivated me to find out why. More research to come on that front it would seem. I also carried out the ping part of the exploration which turned up even more questions. Pinging webct via network tools took an average time of 261.6m/s, a vastly different result to the 98m/s it took to ping the same website using the A-Toolbar. Very odd indeed. Without knowing more about how the ping function really works my reasoning is purely speculation and I am hoping to find out more over time. At this stage my best guess would be that to use the network tools site to ping web ct I am relying heavily on the network that network tools use and perhaps requiring more hops to obtain the information. Using the A-Toolbar ping tool from my own computer perhaps offers a more direct link to the web ct site. At the moment I am unsure and as I said, purely speculating. In time I hope to be able to answer all of these questions with greater understanding.

Module 1: Task 3 - Internet Tools

Since I first began learning about the Internet and how it works I have been fascinated by the incredible way that information travels between computers, at speeds beyond belief, in tiny little packets and materialises on the screen in front of me. Accordingly, the traceroute task was one I really enjoyed. Having often wondered about this sort of information but being in total ignorance as to how to find it, I found this task quite exciting.

For this part of the module I used the Central Ops site to trace the route from my computer to the Curtin site. The attached screenshot illustrates that it required 21 'hops' and took 246 milliseconds from the tools site to the Curtin server. Assuming everything was correct and that I looked in the right place, the Curtin IP address is 134.7.179.53.