From Local to International: What Ping and Traceroute Taught Me

I used the ping command for the first time to test connectivity and measure response times between my computer and google.com, auone.jp, and kmart.com.au. The following are my results and what I learned. I didn't receive packet loss for any of the websites. The ping to google.com had the fastest response times, with round-trip times between 10 ms and 13 ms and an average of 11 ms. This means the server is close to you and very good at keeping latency low. The ping to kmart.com.au took a little longer, with response times ranging from 15 ms to 17 ms and an average of 16 ms. This is because the distance was a little longer, yet the connection remained stable. The ping to auone.jp, on the other hand, had much longer response times, with round-trip times ranging from 176 ms to 181 ms and an average of 177 ms. This big rise in latency shows how long-distance, international data transmission can affect things. 

There were about 22 routers that the traceroute to Google.com went through before reaching its destination. Several intermediate hops timed out. The traceroute still got to Google's server, even though there were these timeouts. The connection was still stable. The traceroute to kmart.com.au took 15 hops. The route traversed many routers, and response times were usually low. A few hops timed out near the end of the trace, but the destination was reached without any problems. It took 18 hops to reach auone.jp, and the response time grew noticeably longer as the packets traversed international networks. Early hops had low latency, but later hops had response times that were close to a whopping 175–179 ms. When I  looked at results from the different websites, I saw that local or nearby servers had fewer hops and faster response times. For the international destinations, they needed more hops and had much higher latency. Ping and traceroute are helpful for troubleshooting because they can help identify connection issues and pinpoint where delays or failures occur. Firewalls that block traffic, network congestion, router configuration settings, or temporary routing problems can all cause a ping or traceroute to time out. Websites might have some blockers as well. In general, these tools give you an idea of how well and reliably your network works.