Traveling Through a Network: Ping and Traceroute

By using ping and traceroute, I learned that packets don’t take a straight line to their destination but travel through multiple “hops,” each one shaping the overall speed and reliability of the connection. My results demonstrated how geography, infrastructure, and filtering policies affect latency, with local servers responding almost instantly and overseas servers showing the impact of distance. These tools don’t just explain internet performance—they are powerful ways to troubleshoot problems, compare routes, and better understand the invisible pathways of our connected world.

Ping Results

Google Ping

• Packets sent/received: 10/10 (0% loss)

• RTT range: 27.8–32.2 ms (avg ~30 ms)

BBC Ping

• Packets sent/received: 11/11 (0% loss)

• RTT range: 8.6–12.1 ms (avg ~10 ms)

Yahoo Japan Ping

• Packets sent/received: 10/10 (0% loss)

• RTT range: 196–378 ms (avg ~240 ms)

The ping command revealed that local or nearby servers like Google and BBC had extremely fast responses with no packet loss, while Yahoo Japan showed a significant delay. This makes sense given the greater physical distance and the complexity of international routing.

Traceroute Results

Google Traceroute 

• Replies visible through hop 5 (2.4–8.1 ms), then silence to the 30-hop limit.

• Likely due to intermediate routers blocking ICMP replies, but the destination is reachable (confirmed by ping).

BBC Traceroute 

• Replies visible through hop 3 (3.8–4.7 ms), then non-responses thereafter.

• Again, likely ICMP filtering since the site was still reachable.

Yahoo Japan Traceroute 

• 11 visible hops before timeouts.

• Route included my local AT&T gateway (2–5 ms), backbone transit, and a handoff to IIJ.Net in Japan (41 ms, 74 ms, then a trans-Pacific spike to 306 ms).

• RTT stabilized in the 190–292 ms range closer to Japan.

This illustrates how geography and network infrastructure shape latency. Google and BBC appear optimized through nearby CDN/anycast nodes, while Yahoo Japan required a full transoceanic path, with visible latency jumps on international handoffs.

Reflection and Analysis

Ping is excellent for testing reachability and average response times, while traceroute shows the “journey” each packet takes. Together, these tools reveal not only whether a site is accessible, but also where along the path slowdowns or failures occur. For example, my traceroutes to Google and BBC looked incomplete due to ICMP filtering, but the ping results confirmed that the endpoints were fully reachable. Meanwhile, the Yahoo Japan traceroute displayed the international handoffs that explained its higher latency.

In general, the relationship between geography and RTT was clear: nearby servers averaged 10–30 ms, while Japan averaged 240 ms and spiked above 300 ms at long-haul hops.

Troubleshooting Applications

These tools are essential for diagnosing connectivity issues.

• Ping confirms reachability and checks for packet loss.

• Traceroute pinpoints where latency spikes or failures begin, helping distinguish whether problems occur locally (like a router issue) or further along the global path.

Both can time out for legitimate reasons. Routers and firewalls may block ICMP requests for security, and network congestion may drop packets under heavy load. In these cases, timeouts don’t always mean failure—they may simply indicate that a router is forwarding packets but not responding to diagnostic probes.