Byte Marks
Traceroute tool tracks hops and times
By Burt Lum
It wasn't long ago only the nerds amongst us would know about or use Internet utilities like traceroute or ping. These utilities were normally reserved for the network administrators, those friendly IM (information management) fellows who would nudge you from your office chair to work on your network problem, all the while whispering, "user error" under their breath.
As it turns out, the traceroute utility is one of the most useful tools to understand what is going on with your Internet connection. It traces the route from your computer (the origin) to a server or Web site (the destination) somewhere on the Internet. The path from origin to destination can traverse multiple routers or gateways. Internet traffic is carried over terrestrial circuits, undersea cables and satellite links. It takes time for your request to get to your favorite Web site and the information to be sent back. The traceroute utility provides you a tool to find out how many hops and how long the process took.
Nowadays, broadband Internet access through DSL or cable modem connections improves download speeds. But when that link seems slow, many turn to the traceroute to understand why.
As we evolve, so has the traceroute program. Once purely a text message containing device names, transit times and IP addresses, there are programs that now provide a visual traceroute. For a good example of this go to www.neoworx.com. There you will find a program called NeoTrace. You can download this program to your Windows machine for a 30-day trial and purchase later if you like it.
What I found extremely cool about this program was the world map. It visually traced the path from origin (Hawai'i) to wherever the destination server was located, such as Japan, Palau, Taiwan, U.S., etc., with a fair amount of detail. It also plots the transit times in a graph. Nerdy as it might sound, we are all becoming personal network administrators, and a tool like NeoTrace opens a window into understanding the great Internet abyss. ;-)
Burt Lum, cyber-citizen and self-anointed tour guide to the Internet frontier, is one click away at burt@brouhaha.net.
