Information Technology Basics Blog: Traveling Through a Network: Ping and Tracert

Ping tracing is used to check connection issues between a network and an IP address or server using a utility tool (Okta, 2022). Data is sent in packets that can take different routes or hops to get to their destination (Okta, 2022). Ping shows if the packet was sent and how long it took to be sent. Traceroute builds upon ping but also gives you names of IP addresses of each piece of equipment that the packet travels through. To access these tools all you need to do is search on windows for command prompt and open it. Once the command prompt is open all you have to do is type ping and the website you want to check. If you want to know the hops the packet of information passes through, then type the command tracert then the website. Tracert will show three ping times for each hop the packet is delivered to. When I pinged google.com it responded with the quickest time since it is our closest region compared to google.ca or google.jp. The tracert command will send 3 packets of information giving three different ping times. I can see that a different route is used to each destination and some of those hops have regional names that I can recognize. Google.com went to a local Washington D.C. networking device while google.ca and google.jp traveled through a Culpeper Virgina networking device. I can also clearly see that google.jp and google.ca take longer to reply because of their distance geographically. However, the greater geographic distance does not mean that the packet travels through more networking hops, only that it took longer for the packets to travel to the destination and back again. Using ping and tracert commands has helped me understand how packets of data travel through many network hops until it reaches its intended destination.

For troubleshooting purposes, ping can be used to consistently test one's connectivity to a reliable site and if you are getting a lost packet response you can then use the traceroute command to see where those packets are getting lost. Providing this information to your internet providers tech support will help guide them to where the issue is occurring. Time out error messages can be caused by many things, but most commonly malfunctioning network equipment, wireless interference, or equipment was just too busy to respond at that moment.