Ping And Traceroute Utilities For Network Analysis

Features of Ping and Traceroute

In the information technology there are various technological aspects that are used in the various organizations to facilitate the communication and the management of the data and this is enabled by use of the computer networking where various computer devices are interlinked together in order to facilitate the communication between those devices.

The performance of the computer network is considered as one of the major aspect to be considered in any organization, and therefore the network need to be tested and analyzed of its performance or troubleshot in order to detect any possible cause of  network failure.

The network analysis is done using network analysis tools which include the ping and traceroute as described here below of their features, operations, performance and utilities.

1.1 Ping and traceroute

The ping and traceroute are the major software applications that are used in the testing of the internet connectivity and also are used in the diagnosis of the computers congestions and finding of the required destination computer to be reached.

The data transmission over the network or internet is done through the transmission of data blocks called as data packets where the transmitted message is split into packets before sending as individual packets and all can follow same or different route to their destinations and after arriving destination the packets are converted to the initial message.

In some cases during sending or receiving data over internet there are timeouts or web server going down that prevents one from having access services or the required website, therefore the ping and traceroute are two major software applications that are used to test internet connections, and do the diagnosis of congestions between the computer/internet service provider and the destination servers to be reached as discussed below.

1.1.1 Ping 

The ping is a utility that is used by network analysts to determine whether the destination servers are online and the possible time that can be taken by client computer to send and receive data packet to destinations host servers.

1.1.1.1 Features

The ping is one of the network testing utilities and it have various features which includes the following.

1. Able to detect if specific IP addresses are accessible or not.
2. Able to send data packets to certain addresses and wait for replies.
3. Able to troubleshoot internet connection easily.
4. Able to test the connection speed between client device and servers.
5. It is able to tell the client time taken for data packet with 32 bytes to move from client to server and back.

1.1.1.2 Operation of utilities

The ping is operated through sending of data packets to specific addresses and then to wait for the replies. This utility is therefore used in troubleshooting of the internet connectivity using various free wares and share wares ping utilities.

1.1.1.3 How used to analyze network performance

The ping utility is used to analyze the network using the windows computer where it is done using various ways which includes the software applications or using the windows command prompts, below is the process used to analyze the network performance using ping utility.

1. Go to windows start button.
2. Choose all programs.
3. Type MS DOS prompt/cmd.
4. On the cmd prompt enter the destination server name e.g. ping yahoo.com.
5. 1.1.2 Traceroute

Operation of Ping and Traceroute Utilities

The traceroute is a network utility tool that the network analysts use to determine the exact routes taken to reach the servers from the client computer and the time taken by each hop.

1.1.2.1 Features

The traceroute being one of the network performances testing utility it has various features which include the following.

1. It is able to trace data packets from the client device to the internet hosts.
2. It is able to show the number of hops required by the data packet to reach the destination host.
3. It is able to indicated time taken by each hop.
4. Able to send data packets which has low time to live fields.
5. Able to determine the number of hops the data packet is allowed to have before it returns using the TTL values.
6. It is able to identify the last host the packet reaches incase the packet don’t reach the destination.
7. It is able to identify the intermediary hosts that the data packet pass through.

1.1.2.2 Operation of utilities

The traceroute utility is operated through the sending of the data packets which has low time to live fields where the TTL values gives the specifications of the number of hops which the data packet is allowed to pass through before it returns back to source.

However in cases where the data packets are not reaching destinations due to low TTL value the last host return the data packet and then identify it.

The traceroute is able to identify the various intermediary hosts by sending of series of data packets and also increment of the TTL value to each successive data packets.

1.1.2.3 How used to analyze network performance

The traceroute is a utility that is used to test the number of hops the network data packet takes before reaching the destination host and also it determine the time taken by data packet in each hop.

Below is the process used to analyze the network performance.

1. On the windows computer.
2. Go to start menu.
3. Choose all programs.
4. Choose the MS DOS prompt.
5. Run the command prompt.
6. On the command prompt type tracert then destination server’s name or IP addresses e.g. Tracert yahoo.com.
7. If a hop returns “Request timed out” it indicates there is network congestions which results to slow website loading and connections dropping.

The MTU refers to the maximum transmission unit which is the largest size of bytes in the IP packets or frames that can be transmitted over internet or any other frame based network and consists of IP headers and protocol headers which includes TCP/UDP or the data payload.

The MTU size is going to be determined below where the selected website is www.google.com.

To be able to get the MTU size the following are done by setting up requirements and instructions to be followed.

1. Have a computer installed with windows operating system.
2. Have internet access to the computer.
3. Must be able to open and access the windows command prompts.

The maximum size of the IP data payload the following steps are followed:

1. Open the command prompt on the windows computer that connects to google.com.
2. Ping the google.com by use of doesn’t fragment option as follows.

Ping <web/IP address>–f –l <data size>

E.g. ping google.com –f –l 1500

1. Reduce the data sizes and then repeat the commands in the (ii) step until when no error will be displayed as follows.

E.g. ping google.com –f –l 1472.

1. Then repeat all the above steps in order to get maximum data size that one can ping without receiving any error.
2. Then calculate the differences between the standard and reduced data size.

  E.g.  1500 bytes-1472 bytes=128 bytes (Tycho, 2014).

2.2 Results

Experiment	Standard data size	Reduced data size	Deviation	Comment
EXP1	1500	1495	5	Need to be fragmented
EXP2	1495	1490	5	Need to be fragmented
EXP3	1490	1485	5	Need to be fragmented
EXP4	1485	1480	5	Need to be fragmented
EXP5	1480	1475	5	Need to be fragmented
EXP6	1475	1473	2	Need to be fragmented
EXP7	1473	1472	1	Need to be fragmented
EXP8	1472	1470	2	sent
EXP9	1470	1465	5	sent
EXP10	1465	1460	5	sent
EXP11	1460	1455	5	sent
EXP12	1455	1450	5	sent
EXP13	1450	1445	5	sent
EXP14	1445	1440	5	sent

1.1 Analysis

The above shows the results of the MTU size analysis where various data sizes were used , form the results the maximum data size used was 1500 bytes which was not sent and it required to be fragmented , the subsequent data sizes were sent and 1472 bytes was the first highest data size to be sent successfully without any data loss , however the subsequent reduced data sizes were also sent and took lesser time than 1472 bytes data size , therefore the smaller the data size the faster it gets transmitted.

Using Ping and Traceroute to Analyze Network Performance

2 RTT vs Distance 

The RTT refers to the Round Trip time which is the duration which is measured in milliseconds starting from the time the client computer browser send requests to the target server and the time when it receives the response from the host server, it is therefore used as one of the main key performance measure matrix for the web application (Michael, 2017).

The distance is the measure of how far the client computer is from the targeted host servers and this can be obtained online, below is the method used in recording the RTT and distance records.

In this experiment the websites to be used are as follows.

1. https://www.uda.ad/-Andorra
2. https://www.aud.ac.in/– India
3. https://alhikmah.edu.ng/-Nigeria

To obtain the RTT and the distance the following steps are to be followed.

1. Open the command prompt on the windows computer that connects to the selected websites.
2. Ping the selected website by use of doesn’t fragment option as follows.

Ping <web/IP address>–f –l <data size>

E.g. ping uda.ad –f –l 1472

1. Record the average RTT time.
2. Repeat steps (ii) and (iii) for all other selected websites.
3. Open web browser (Specialist, 2018) .
4. In the URL enter this link : https://www.indo.com/distance/
5. On the “From” text box enter the current location e.g. Chicago, IL
6. On the “To” text box enter the website host server location e.g. Jakarta
7. Click on the “look it up” button to get the distance
8. Record the distance on the table below.
9. Repeat steps (vii), (viii), (x) and (ix) for all selected websites.

Below are the results obtained from the selected websites experiments and recorded as follows.

Hostnames	RTTs(ms)	Distances(km)
uda.ad	260	11967
aud.ac.in	608	5446
alhikmah.edu.ng	303	3853

2.3 Analysis  

1.1.1 Calculated correlation between RTT and distance

The correlation is calculated to show the relationship between the RTT and Distance where the RTTs is not influenced by the change in distance, this is because the correlation coefficient is -0.435703139 which is almost equal to zero as obtained from the below excel results and graphs.

From the above analysis it is clear that the RTTs and the Distance do not correlates such that the change in distance do not affect the change in RTTs, however there is likely hood of having a positive correlation between the RTTs and other attributes like propagation, transmission and queuing delays when they change either positively or negatively unlike the change in distance (Stephen, 2008).

1 Traceroute 

1.1 Method

The traceroute is a utility tool used to obtain the various hops that the data packet follows to the destination, however in this project the following steps are used to get the traceroute of the various selected websites (Maeve, 2007).

1. Open the command prompt on the windows computer that connects to the selected websites.
2. Tracert the selected website by use of doesn’t fragment option as follows.

Tracert <web/IP address>

E.g. Tracert uda.ad

1. Record the IP addresses, hostnames
2. Open the web browser.
3. On the URL enter https://www.whois.net.
4. On the Your Domain Starting Place text box enter the domain name
5. Record the owner/location of the router in table (Karumanchi, 2012).

Below are the results obtained from the traceroute and the owner of the hosts as recorded here below.

Obtained from the following pings

1. Ping uda.ad.

Website name	IP addresses	Router Location	Owner router
www. uda.ad	192.168.43.1	Andorra, Pennsyvania	uda.ad
172.16.28.121	Andorra, Pennsyvania	uda.ad
172.16.28.44	Andorra, Pennsyvania	uda.ad
172.16.28.34	Andorra, Pennsyvania	uda.ad
154.79.241.202	Andorra, Pennsyvania	uda.ad
213.144.176.217	Andorra, Pennsyvania	uda.ad
88.149.182.221	Andorra, Pennsyvania	uda.ad
77.67.90.250	Andorra, Pennsyvania	uda.ad
217.118.118.78	Andorra, Pennsyvania	uda.ad
89.202.169.126	Andorra, Pennsyvania	uda.ad
194.158.78.228	Andorra, Pennsyvania	uda.ad
www. aud.ac.in	192.168.13.1	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
172.16.28.121	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
172.16.13.44	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
172.16.13.34	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
154.79.241.202	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
197.155.94.197	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
197.155.94.9	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
5.11.10.122	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
185.1.47.7	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
182.79.211.47	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
61.95.151.94	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
103.233.126.17	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
103.233.127.103	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
103.1.115.137	India, New Delhi	aud.ac.in
www.alhikmah.edu.ng	192.168.43.1	Nigeria, Lagos	alhikmah.edu.ng
172.16.28.113	Nigeria, Lagos	alhikmah.edu.ng
172.16.13.44	Nigeria, Lagos	alhikmah.edu.ng
172.16.13.34	Nigeria, Lagos	alhikmah.edu.ng
154.79.241.202	Nigeria, Lagos	alhikmah.edu.ng
185.1.15.41	Nigeria, Lagos	alhikmah.edu.ng
104.28.6.73	Nigeria, Lagos	alhikmah.edu.ng

From the above record it shows that the data packets are able to move through various routers in different locations  and therefore the peculiarity in this compared to the task 3 is that the data packets covers multiple distances unlike in the task 3 where only one distance is covered.

2 Wireshark 

The wireshark is software application which is an open source data packets analyzer, this software is used mainly to troubleshoot network, analysis, software and communication protocols development and educations below is the description of the installation, operation, and analysis process (Goyal, 2011).

Determining MTU Size

2.1 Installation

To install the application there are various steps that are followed as follows.

1. Open the web browser
2. On the URL enter wireshark website link https://www.wireshark.org/.

To start capturing the host data streams used in part 3 the following is done to configure the TCP stream and DNS streams.

1. Click on start menu.
2. All programs.
3. Click on wireshark application.
4. Then double-click the name of a network interface under Capture in order to start capturing packets on that interface.
5. Configuring the wireshark to follow the TCP stream.

To identify the DNS data packets click on the filter box and type “dns” and enter to display all DNS packets (Wixom, 2016). 

1.2 Results

Below are the results of the packet capturing.

1. The captured network interfaces are as below.
2. 1.1 Analysis 

The wireshark application is a powerful tool that captures all the data packets passing through a given network interface in a real time mode, however this tool captures the TCP and the DNS packets but it provides a feature that is able to filter the data packets according to either TCP and the DNS (Award, 2013) however most of these packets were captured during the ping and tracert processes.

2 Conclusions 

In this assignment there are various lessons that were learnt about the network troubleshooting which includes the use of the ping utility to get the destination host and the time taken by the packets to reach the host from the client and receiving back the feedback , the issue of traceroute utility also was another good lesson learnt that enable the user know the number of hops that the data packet pass through before reaching the destination and also detecting where the data packet becomes very  slow.Other aspects learnt include the RTT size and distance analysis, wireshark installation, configuration, data packets capturing and filtering the DNS data packets.

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Download the wireshark setup from the website.