Traceroute Overview Traceroute can be used to show you how a site is physically connected to the Internet.  Along the way you will also gain an understanding of how networks inter-connect.

In the WHOIS Tutorial, you can determine who is the registered owner of a domain name.  Knowing who owns the domain may not satisfy your curiosity. You may also be interested in where is the Web server located, and how is it connected to the Internet. There is a network utility called traceroute which is often used to troubleshoot network connections. In a Unix or Windows environment, Traceroute can be used to determine the specific network route taken from your workstation to reach a specific remote host. (Dos command: tracert sitename.com) Fortunately, there are many Unix systems on the Internet that allow us to originate a traceroute from their location to any other location that you specify. 

Look at this sample traceroute from www.boardwatch.com to www.whitehouse.gov:

1. t1 (204.144.169.2) 1.499 ms
2. t1.esoft.com (199.45.143.14) 9.549 ms
3. border-from-14-esoft.boulder.co.coop.net (199.45.130.13) 15.155 ms
4. core-gw-eth-0-2.boulder.co.coop.net (199.45.132.33) 33.277 ms
5. denver-cr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.212.249) 19.309 ms
6. denver-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.52.1) 19.306 ms
7. oakland-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.133) 48.046 ms
8. oakland-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.78) 48.913 ms
9. sanjose1-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.74) 53.034 ms
10. mae-west2.us.psi.net (198.32.184.23) 47.213 ms
11. se.sc.psi.net (38.1.3.5) 148.414 ms
12. rc5.southeast.us.psi.net (38.1.25.5) 127.893 ms
13. ip2.ci3.herndon.va.us.psi.net (38.25.11.2) 139.433 ms
14. 198.137.240.33 (198.137.240.33) 134.218 ms
15. www2.whitehouse.gov (198.137.240.92) 141.93 ms

In this example, boardwatch gets its connectivity from "esoft.com" who get its connectivity from "coop.net" who is connected to BBNplanet (A backbone provider). BBNplanet Inter-connects with another Backbone provider (PSI) through the MAE-West Connection point. It then appears that the Whitehouse.gov Web site is connected though PSI near Virginia. Recognize that an organization's website may not be located at the organization. The organization's website may be hosted someplace else. A more accurate approach to determine the location of the organization might be to do a traceroute to the organization's mailhost or proxy server.

Tips on reading the traceroute results:

• Each Internet provider has their own naming convention.  You will eventually recognize that most traceroutes travel across the largest Internet Providers (such as those on Russ Haynal's ISP page.)
• Router names may include an Exchange point (MAE, NAP, PAIX) - (See List of exchange points from Wikipedia,)
• Router names may describe the Infrastructure Topology (T1, T3, FDDI, ATM, HSSI, ETH)
• Router names may be the 3-letter code of the nearest airport in their node names.   Here is an  airport code database
• A list of common hostname abbreviations and codes.
• Router names may be based on "special" locations. For example: "wil" might mean One Wilshire.
• Router names may be just an IP Number. You can whois an IP number using resources at the top of my whois webpage.
• If you are trying to "read" the IP numbers, you will want to browse around the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority ,  Understanding IP Addressing., and IP network index. IPv4, and IPv6.
• Internet Protocols - Nice detailed write-up from Cisco about TCP-IP

Traceroute Utilities:

You can perform traceroutes from various sites via  traceroute.org, opus1,  Geektools. or Network-tools.com.  World-wide map of traceroute servers, list of traceroute servers,   Multiple traceroute - Initiate simultaneous Traceroutes from servers around the world.    Visual Route plots your traced route over a geographic map. You can try a Java_based version of Visual route online through this web page: http://visualroute.datametrics.com/ . Pingplotter another tool which also includes monitoring capabilities (to prove to your ISP that the connection does have problems)

For more information see CAIDA Animations for traceroute,

Final Thoughts. Recognize that a website can be hosted anywhere. Organizations make the decision on where they want to host a web site.  Sometimes they have the connection, facilities and personnel to host the web site at their own facility, but it is also common for an organization to host their site at a commercial web hosting facility.

Contact me at 703-729-1757 or  Russ 'at' navigators.com  
If you use email, put "internet training" in the subject of the email.
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