Traveling Through a Network: Tracing the Digital Highway

 This week, I dove deep into how data actually travels across the internet. Using basic network tools—ping and traceroute—I ran diagnostics on three global websites: Google, ABC Australia, and ECNS China. What I found was a behind-the-scenes look at how location, content delivery networks (CDNs), and internet infrastructure shape your browsing experience.

🚀 Ping Results: Speed Check from My Terminal

I ran four ping attempts for each site:

WebsiteAvg. Latency Packet Loss

Google.com 25 ms 0%

ABC.net.au 18 ms 0%

ECNS.cn 48 ms 0%


🔎 What stood out? Even though ABC is an Australian site, it had the lowest latency. This was likely due to Akamai’s CDN hosting content closer to me in the U.S., proving that server proximity isn’t always what it seems.


🛰️ Traceroute Results: Mapping the Journey

Using Tracert in PowerShell, I saw how many “hops” data takes to reach each site:

WebsiteTotal HopsNotes

Google.com 27 Timed out on final hops—normal for Google due to ICMP filtering.

ABC.net.au 11 Routed to a nearby Akamai edge server.

ECNS.cn 17 Passed through Cogent’s backbone and international routers.


📍 Key insight: Traceroute exposed the real paths packets take and confirmed that CDNs like Akamai reroute traffic to local servers—lowering latency and improving performance.


🛠️ What Ping & Traceroute Reveal

  • Ping checks if a site is reachable and shows how quickly data returns (roundtrip time).
  • Traceroute shows how the data gets there—each stop along the way (aka router hop).

Together, these tools help identify:

  • Whether a server is down.
  • Where network slowdowns or failures are occurring.
  • How CDNs and ISPs optimize traffic flow.

⚠️ Why Ping/Traceroute Might Fail

  1. Firewall Blocking: Many networks block ICMP (used by ping/traceroute) for security.
  2. Router Configuration: Some hops don’t return signals to reduce load or hide infrastructure.

Even if you see “Request Timed Out,” the trace might still complete successfully—timeouts often don’t mean failure.


🖼️ Screenshots

(Insert your own screenshots here for the final blog post—ping and traceroute from at least one website.)


🧠 Final Thoughts

Geography matters—but not as much as infrastructure. Thanks to CDNs, sites hosted overseas (like abc.net.au) can perform faster than local ones. This lab reinforced how useful simple tools like ping and traceroute are for diagnosing slow connections, understanding internet routing, and even spotting CDN optimization in action.

Whether you’re gaming, streaming, or troubleshooting, knowing how your data travels is a game-changer.

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