RYAN GOH 1001763 CSE NS LAB 1

Part 1: Measurement of round trip times using ping

Question 1 (10pt): For each host, record the percentage of packets sent that resulted in
a successful response. Record also the minimum, average, and maximum round trip
times for the packets that resulted in a response. (RTT in ms)

Website Successful Percentage Min Average Max

(%) RTT RTT RTT
www.csail.mit.edu 100 269 328 555
www.berkeley.edu 100 203 243 284
www.usyd.edu.au 100 167 190 231
www.kyoto-u.ac.jp 100 107 159 304

Question 2 (10pt): Describe and explain the differences in the minimum round trip
time to each of these hosts.

We can observe a trend based on the Minimum Round-Trip-times column that it takes a
shorter time to travel to hosts such as www.kyoto-u.ac.jp and www.usyd.edu.au,
compared to www.csail.mit.edu and www.berkeley.edu. This makes sense as Japan and
Australia is closer to the originating local network in Singapore, compared to the
United States, and therefore the packets have to travel a greater distance.

Question 3 (10pt): Repeat the exercise using packet sizes of 56, 512 and 1024 bytes.
Record the minimum, average, and maximum round trip times for each of the packet
sizes. Why are the minimum round-trip times to the same hosts different when using
56, 512, and 1024byte packets?

Website Data byte Successful Min RTT Average Max

packets Percentage % RTT RTT
www.csail.mit.edu 56 100 269 328 555
512 100 259 331 430
1024 100 259 307 439
www.berkeley.edu 56 100 203 243 284
512 100 213 263 386
1024 100 228 272 433
www.usyd.edu.au 56 100 167 190 231
512 100 179 218 380
1024 100 191 241 340
www.kyoto-u.ac.jp 56 100 107 159 304
512 100 99 165 304
1024 100 117 196 342
 RYAN GOH 1001763 CSE NS LAB 1

As we increase the size of the packets that are sent to the hosts, the transmission delay
increases as the time for the packets to be transmitted and received increases. However,
this transmission delay is not as significant as propagation delay plays a greater role in
affecting the round-trip-times.

Question 4 (10pt): Record the percentage of the packets sent that resulted in a
successful response. What are some possible reasons why you may not have received a
response? (Be sure to check the host in a web browser.)

Percentage of packets sent that have a successful response is 0% as all packets that were
pinged return a Request timed out response.

The website only allows HTTP requests and not ICMP packets
The web server might be reducing its allocation of providing services to serve other
web requests

Part 2: Understanding Internet routes using traceroute

Question 5 (10pt): Explain how traceroute discovers a path to a remote host. (Hint:
The traceroute manual will be helpful for answering this question.)

It sends a sequence of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets of increasing TTL

values. The UDP packet that reaches the first router gets dropped as its TTL values is
decremented by one, and sends an ICMP message back to the origin. At intermediate
routers, the packets TTL value is incremented by one. Once the destination is reached,
the packets stop sending ICMP messages to notify the source that it has reached the
destination.
 RYAN GOH 1001763 CSE NS LAB 1

Question 6 (10pt): Record the output of traceroute when run in both directions
above.

New York

Amsterdam
 RYAN GOH 1001763 CSE NS LAB 1

Tokyo

Question 7 (10pt): Describe anything unusual you might observe about the output. Are
the same routers traversed in both directions? If no, why might this be the case?

It does not run through the same routers in both directions as routers will select the least
cost path to transfer the packets as both directions may not have the same cost.