While running the ping and traceroute commands it was simple, due to the directions given. They were so easy to follow. I have never run a traceroute before, but this was remarkably interesting. The internet communicates with billions of other computers. Every computer has an IP address and creates internet packets. The packets include a packet type, data, and an address. The computers understand how to send the packets, and the sometimes take different routes depending on the traffic (Vahid & Lysecky, 2017). Looking at the ping tests and traceroute, it looks like geographical location does matter. If a destination website is closer to the United States such as google it can take as little as 9 ms, while a website in France can take as long as 120 ms. The further the location geographically, the more hops it will need to travel, and the longer it will take. Although it all still goes extremely fast generally speaking. This is just measuring milliseconds. There does appear to be some exceptions to the geography affecting speed, but the Australian site pinged at the same average as google.com. I did my ping tests in the early morning around 8am CT. When It tried it later in the day, it was a little be slower. I am thinking the amount of traffic at different times throughout the day affect the speed.

One example where I personally witnessed a ping test was at work. I work from home and the computer they sent me would not connect to certain websites. I allowed the IT department to take control of my computer remotely, and they ran a ping test. This way they checked if the computer they sent me was the issue, the website they wanted me to go to, or the internet itself. The ping test showed that my internet was working fine, but the computer had a firewall that blocked me from accessing the websites they wanted me to use. Reasons that ping requests or traceroute command might time out or return with an error response are problems with the internet connection, the end computer or website is down, a firewall, routing problem with the network, or an internal error with your own gateway (Internet Broadband Reviews and Guides, 2020).