Question

During this assignment, students will explore how ping, traceroute, and the default gateway settings affect device communication.

Answer 1

Below is explained how ping, traceroute, and the default gateway settings affect device communication.

1)Default gateway settings

A default gateway makes it possible for devices in one network to communicate with devices in another network. If a computer, for example, requests a web page, the request goes through the default gateway before exiting the local network to reach the internet. Think of a default gateway as an intermediate device between the local network and the internet. The default gateway transfers internal data to the internet and back again.

How Traffic Moves Through a Default Gateway:

All the clients on a network point to a default gateway that routes their traffic. The default gateway device passes this traffic from the local subnet to devices on other subnets. The default gateway connects a local network to the internet, although internal gateways for communication within a local network are used in corporate networks.

The default gateway in a home network, for example, understands specific routes that must be taken to move internet requests from a computer out of the network and onto the next piece of equipment that can understand what needs to be done. From there, the same process happens until the data reaches its destination. With each network that the traffic hits, that network's default gateway relays the information to the internet and back to the computer, which requested it.

When traffic is bound for other internal devices and not a device external to the local network, the default gateway is used to understand the request, but instead of sending the data out of the network, it points it to the correct local device.This process is understood based on the IP address that the originating device requests.

2)Ping

Ping is a networking utility used to determine the reachability of an online server.Ping sends an echo request via Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) and measures the echo reply. This measurement is known as the 'latency', usually presented in milliseconds (ms).Despite ping being the overall test and latency being the measurement, in the gaming world players and even developers still use ‘ping’ as alternative shorthand for ‘latency’.

How Traffic Moves with Ping:

There are several factors that can impact latency – internet connection speed is only one of them.Latency can also be impacted by the network protocols you’re interacting with (such as the online component of a video game’s engine, often called “netcode”), the setup of your local internet connection, and other factors such as software or hardware firewalls.One of the biggest impacts on latency, though, is geographical location.For example, if you’re in Australia, but playing on an American server, your latency will be higher because the geographical distance creates a delay between information being sent from an Australian client-side (player’s) connection before it’s received and relayed from the American server.Latency is a big concern in online gaming, as it can have a severe impact on gameplay.It is also often visually represented, providing a constant reminder to the player, either numerically (in milliseconds) or by wi-fi-like bar graph signal-strength indicators, which may or may not be colour coded in ranges from green (low latency) to red (high latency).

3)Traceroute

The nearly instantaneous loading time of your internet can make it seem like your computer has a direct path to every URL destination. But the request that you send from your computer doesn't actually travel nonstop from Point A to Point B. In reality, your online data must travel through many devices, primarily routers, before it reaches its final destination, and vice versa.A traceroute maps how internet data travels from your computer to your intended destination. Along the way, the traceroute documents the intermediary devices and measures how long it takes for data to travel from your computer to each point.From a technical perspective, a traceroute sends three ICMP packets to each router it encounters on the way to the final destination. An ICMP packet is a small packet of data that consumes little bandwidth, and is used primarily as a measurement tool.

When reading a traceroute, you're judging not just what you see, but where you see it. The advantage of using a traceroute is that it can tell you where a problem exists. This comes in handy when you're trying to figure out which service - your ISP, your VoIP provider, or your own equipment - is responsible for subpar network performance.

At the same time, a traceroute is only one of several troubleshooting methods for determining the cause of a poor VoIP connection. Once you have identified the router that may be causing a network issue, you can perform a ping test to that hop to determine if it is the cause of jitter, packet loss, or other errors.