Computer Networks

Version 1.0
Tracing

NeoTrace is an Internet utility used to trace the connections between computers on the
Internet. At its heart is a super fast multi-threaded version of Traceroute. NeoTrace
allows you to trace the connection from your computer to other sites on the Internet,
and analyze this information.

All traffic on the Internet is made up of packets of data that travel between multiple
computers or nodes from their destination to their source. The path that these packets
traverse is called the route.

The structure of the Internet has a long history and many aspects of it are a result of
the evolution it has made from the original network into the global data infrastructure
it is used as today. One of these aspects is that there is no single route between any
two distantly spaced nodes. Another aspect is that you are at the mercy of the
intervening route for the performance of your traffic.

Regardless of how fast your connection to ‘the Internet’ is the slowest point in the
route limits your overall connection to another site. The chain is only as strong as its
weakest link.

Latency is the time it takes for data to travel the route.

Bandwidth is the amount of data that can travel through the connection in a given
period of time.

Besides using NeoTrace to look for weak spots in a connection you can use it to:

• Discover if you can’t reach a site due to a failure at your ISP or further into the
Internet.
• Determine the point of a network failure that is preventing you from reaching
a web site.
• Track down the origin of unwanted emails (‘spam’).
• Monitor performance.
• Uncover the owners of a site.
• Determine the type and quality of connection a site has to the net.
• Get detailed contact information on sites all over the world (when available).

1. Open Neo Trace Pro. On the Target pane, you will have to put down the URL
or the IP address (if you know any) which you want to trace. On view option,
you will find 3 options- map view, node view and list view. The info pane will
show you the necessary information about any chosen particular node(s).
2. From View, select node view. Write down www.bdjobs.com on the Trace
pane. And then press enter. From your server to the desired server the routes
will be shown. The nodes with green colour say it’s fast in processing ping
commands. Yellow and green nodes denote that they are slower and slowest
respectively. Write down how may hops it took to reach www.bdjobs.com

Rushdi Shams Dept of CSE, KUET

 from your machine. Write down how many green nodes, yellow nodes and red
nodes are present on the route. If the ping reaches the desired server then write
down the owner of the server. Now, from view option, choose list view. And
find out the graph there. Save it for your report.
3. Similarly find the routes for www.microsoft.com, www.buet.ac.bd,
www.freecomputerbooks.com, www.bolton.ac.uk. Take sets of data for each-
how many hops it takes to reach the desired server, how many green, yellow
and red nodes are there, who is the owner of the site (if ping is not dropped for
some reasons) and the graph.
4. Repeat the whole process again. Is there any change on hops and on the
graph? Take a good look at it. Try to find out the following questions.

Questions:

1. Sometimes, the desired server is not found due to several reasons. What may
be the reasons?
2. With PING, you can do constructive works like tracing the route. What
destructive works can you do with that? (hints: read on Denial of Service
attack)
3. What do you mean by hop, TTL, RTT? What are the necessities of them?
4. Can you ping your own machine? If yes, how? What does it call?

Deliverable:

The report should contain Introduction, Functionality of this software, data sets you
found during tracing the routes to the desired server, answer of the questions and
conclusion.

The report must be delivered both in .doc format and in printed format. I will not
accept any hand written report.
You should not copy other people’s work. If you take a reference from the Internet or
other source, then appropriately state them in the end of your report. You will be
penalized a resubmission if you copy any of your classmate’s work (that classmate
will be penalized too for this) or if you take ideas from the Internet or other source
but do not refer to them at all.

Rushdi Shams Dept of CSE, KUET