Course: INFO 620

Title: Data Communications

Instructor: Promod Sreedharan

INFO 620 Networking Layer: Routing

Goal: Experiential learning by applying lecture and reading material to real-world issues.

Output by end of class: Provide an analysis detailing each step in class, and review in class.

Traceroute
Traceroute is a tool which sends 3 packets to a destination computer. The Time To Live (TTL)
in the packets are set to a low number which means when the next hop router gets the packet
it will subtract the low number from the TTL counter and since that the packet has a low
number minus 1 then the TTL should be expired and the router sends a “time expired” packet
back to the source address with the last reached ip address.

The Traceroute application next, makes 3 new packets with a TTL slightly higher, sends it
out and the router After the next hop router gets the packet, and responds back with its ip
address.

Notice that the 3 packets are listed with different times and this helps with averaging the latency
one can expect getting to that address.

Tools to use:

Terminal - Windows uses the word: TRACERT

Terminal - Mac/Linux use the word: TRACEROUTE
Wireshark - Filter with a host
 Course: INFO 620
Title: Data Communications
Instructor: Promod Sreedharan

Submission 1 - Trace to www.vcu.edu.

● Open the Terminal Program
● Do a NSlookup on www.vcu.edu and save the IP address
● Open Wireshark and start a new session capturing just the host of www.vcu.edu
● At your terminal do a “traceroute www.vcu.edu “ or “tracert www.vcu.edu”
● Look at the captured Wireshark packet and answer these questions:
○ What is the Time To Live set to in first 3 Source Packets ?__128______
○ What is the protocol used to Source Packets ?_____TCP_____ ______
○ What is the protocol used by the www.vcu.edu to respond ? _TCP_____
○ What is the Time to Live set to by the www.vcu.edu ? __243________

Submission 2 Trace to Google.com

● Open the Terminal Program
● At your terminal do a “traceroute www.google.com “ or “tracert www.google.com”
● Answer these questions
○ What do the **** indicate? __the target server did not respond like traceroute
expected before a time out occurred____________________________
○ How many test hops were shown ? ___10___________________
○ What device is the first IP address shown __it is the closest router which is my
Verizon fios router_____?
○ Did you see all the hops - why/why not ?__No because traceroute will only show
the hops from the inquiry messages__________?

Submission 3 Trace to Google.com

● Open a Web browser go to the website for Jagiellonian University in Krakow Poland.
● Lookup the IP address of this web site - just the domain
● Open another Browser tab and go to the website “http://4or6.com/traceroute.php?l=en”
● Put in the website’s IP address and traceroute to the server
● Answer these questions
○ How many hops occured ? ________2__________________
○ What countries were crossed ?__San Jose, United States, Berlin,
Germany__Krakow,Poland___________________
○ Where did the traceroute start ? _____Local Router, then San Jose, United
States of America_________________
● Put in the website’s IP address and Ping to the server
○ How many milliseconds did it take ?___4 seconds______
--- 149.156.169.67 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2015ms
Course: INFO 620
Title: Data Communications
Instructor: Promod Sreedharan