I downloaded a number of applications from http://network-tools.com/ to complete the steps in this task.
When I attempted to traceroute to curtin .edu.au, I always timed out at the same stage, on the 13th hop. I tried this a number of times over a two day period, and always received the same result. This has led me to theorise that there must be something wrong with a connection for this hop - perhaps an incorrectly configured firewall, or perhaps just one of those annoying internet glitches that happen from time to time.
There was no average time to reach Curtin as the traceroute ultimately failed every time. If the traceroute did not fail, then I would have simply to add up the connection time for each step, then divide by the number of steps to obtain the average hop time
The IP of curtin.edu.au is 134.7.17.136
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the next step in this task, I pinged both http://webct.curtin.edu.au/ and http://network-tools.com/
Below are the average ping times for each URL:
http://webct.curtin.edu.au/ - 243ms
http://network-tools.org/ - 49ms
I was quite surprised by the amount of time difference between pinging the two URLs. For one, I certainly expected the WebCT website to return a lot faster than the Network Tools site, partly because it is physically located much closer to me, in Australia, rather than Network Tools US based website.
I suppose that there are a number of reasons as to why this could be the case - my requests to Curtin could have been redirected through a network that was experiencing a lot of traffic, or perhaps it is on a much slower network than Network Tools.
I quite enjoyed this task and found It relatively straight forward, as I am used to using the ping command to test both whether external websites are responding, and to also test whether my internet connection is working. It is a very handy, easy to use and easy to remember command for ascertaining whether one's computer can access external web servers, or indeed has access to the net at all.
Further than this, ping is a quick and pain free way to establish the IP address of URLs, and can be of further assistance when troubleshooting issues with things like Load Balancers, or when multiple Web Front End's are in use.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This task called on me to traceroute from my computer to curtin.edu.au and to compare the number of hops with the earlier traceroute.
It was interesting to note that from the A-Toolbar application, the traceroute ultimately resolves at hop 14, with the IP address 134.7.179.53
From http://network-tools.com/ it did not resolve after hop 12, receiving a number of time outs before ultimately aborting.
It is interesting to note the different IP address that was resolved to, and this leads me to think that perhaps curtin.edu.au sits on multiple servers with a load balancer, which may explain the different IPs. As to why it was not resolving from the Network Tools application, but was resolving from A-Toolbar - well that is a bit of a mystery to me! It is possible that at the time that I attempted to run Network Tools there was a brief problem at that exact time that I was running the test, and this issue was rectified prior to running my tests from A-Toolbar. Though it is possible, I don't think it is too likely. My hunch is that the problem is more likely related to the different IP addresses that are being resolved to, as opposed to the application requesting the traceroute.
No comments:
Post a Comment