Around the World in 80 Hops

80 days Phileas? Meet my Internet Tool.

Traceroute was a tool I enjoyed playing with. First I went to centralops.net and found Curtin to be 20 hops from the site at 251 ms. I then went to networktools.com and found it 20 hops at 259 ms. I found out that the IP number of the hostname curtin.edu.au is 134.7.179.53.

In my semi-ignorant bliss I have probably been happy with the illusion that the pages I view on the Internet were delivered there by the magical Internet Fairies, and although that would explain the fairy dust on my keyboard, it was probably not a healthy view for a budding web designer to hold. This exercise takes the ghost out of the machine by showing the physical path, and hardware, the information travels through on its journey to your screen.

Up until today I thought ping was the younger brother of a famous Swedish penguin. I am learning a lot. I gather ping is about speed and quality of connection, gamers seem to be obsessed with it and with reducing it and thereby their lag. I imagine hell is being trapped in an elevator full of gamers discussing lag and what to do about it. I pinged the Curtin server from my computer and received the below information. It seems to be written in Aramaic, I have sent a copy to Mel Gibson but have not heard back from him yet. I will post more when I have deciphered it.

Then, using my installed Apple network utility (thats right Robert, Apple, I am comfortable with my sexuality) I used traceroute from my computer to the Curtin server. Then I hit a speed bump, not really an issue when you are moving at a rate that would make a Three Toed Sloth appear dynamic, the IP number of the Curtin Server is different now! Whilst my immediate response was to curse the magical Internet Fairies, I am now convinced there is a logical explanation . I will post an update to this when I get it sorted.