Using Pings and Traceroutes to travel through Networks

Have you ever wondered: 

• Why your computer is not loading pages on the internet as fast as it used to? 
• Felt like you pay for subpar home internet services?
• Told people you live in the middle of nowhere or in 5G towns?
• Called customer service and they said there was a tower less than 5 miles from you that is working?

Well, there is a reason for all of your valid feelings! You can save money by doing the work yourself (before you spend money on more than one service technician).

Computer technicians use a search technique called Ping and Traceroute to see where internet and computer problems lie. When pinging, technicians test your computer to see if it is sending packets of information through cell towers, and if the packets are sent, they check to see if the towers or website are working to bounce the packets back to you. Depending on how long it takes, it will tell the technician if heavy data usage is in the area near you, causing internet lag. When tracerouting (tracert), the technician is checking your internet service provider's signal, regardless of whether you are using dial-up (what is that anyway?), cable, or fiber optics. This is also where a technician can tell you if you need to pay for more internet megabytes to carry the load you use the internet service for, like streaming or regular run-of-the-mill emailing. 

How do they test the computer and internet?

This is where you usually see that little black box pop up, and you see the technician put any URL website in and click enter. These are the steps they take to ping and tracert:

Microsoft Windows:

1. Right-click the Start menu and click Run.
2. Type cmd (command) into the textbox and click OK.
3. In the command prompt, type ping or tracert, then hit your SPACEBAR, and type in any domain name/IP address/website/URL (all the many names i.e. Google.com is formally and informally called)

If you have the command text box open, no need to redo steps 1 & 2, just type the next cmd.

Mac (Linux operating system)

1. Open the Applications folder and choose Utilities.
2. Choose Network Utility and then ping or traceroute.

Secondary Option (for the sexy tech)

1. Open up Terminal.
2. Type ping or traceroute, then SPACEBAR, and type in any domain name/IP address/website/URL (all the many names i.e. Google.com is formally and informally called)

What should the results look like?

The final results should look similar to this:

How do you read Traceroutes and Pings?

Lexus Nexis says for traceroutes, that any number between 250ms (milliseconds) to 300ms indicates a slow service. Anything over 600ms, indicates internet connectivity problems. You can see what Lexus Nexis says here for pings.

If your milliseconds are low like mine were, there is a possibility that the packet's return information was blocked by firewalls or rerouted, showing asterisks or the Request timed out. There are plenty of free geolocators online, like NordVPN , where you can find out where your request traveled by simply using the IP addresses. 

To see how your internet should be running, you could test an international website and see your results. Here's an example of what the results could look like from two international websites I chose.

Questions or Comments?

Post them below!!

Thanks for the hyperlink tip, Isaac! I plan to go back to my other posts and incorporate your thoughtful reminder. 

Thank you, Professor Smith; your comments mean a lot to me!