Choose a route, any route:

A trace route from the network-tools.com site (in the U.S.A.) to curtin.edu.au yields the following results.

134.7.179.53 is from Australia(AU) in region Oceana

TraceRoute to 134.7.179.53 [curtin.edu.au]
Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name
1 38 48 39 72.249.0.65 -
2 81 56 55 206.123.64.22 -
3 46 33 15 216.52.189.9 border4.g3-2.colo4dallas-3.ext1.dal.pnap.net
4 11 9 28 216.52.191.103 core1.tge5-2-bbnet2.ext1.dal.pnap.net
5 19 17 10 144.228.250.113 sl-st20-dal-8-2-1.sprintlink.net
6 23 15 28 144.232.20.82 sl-crs2-fw-0-15-3-0.sprintlink.net
7 100 58 58 144.232.19.196 -
8 42 52 110 144.232.0.120 sl-gw28-ana-1-0-0.sprintlink.net
9 162 93 75 144.223.30.26 sl-aarne-46055-0.sprintlink.net
10 226 246 228 202.158.194.77 so-3-1-0.bb1.b.syd.aarnet.net.au
11 272 230 239 202.158.194.33 so-2-0-0.bb1.a.mel.aarnet.net.au
12 251 242 237 202.158.194.17 so-2-0-0.bb1.a.adl.aarnet.net.au
13 267 268 272 202.158.194.5 so-0-1-0.bb1.a.per.aarnet.net.au
14 284 261 273 202.158.198.178 gigabitethernet0.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au
15 270 273 278 202.158.198.186 gw1.er1.curtin.cpe.aarnet.net.au
16 292 308 288 134.7.16.46 te2-4-b309-cr.net.curtin.edu.au
17 275 277 277 134.7.248.65 te1-1.b309-sr.net.curtin.edu.au
18 287 259 263 134.7.179.53 -

Trace complete

How many ‘hops’ are there? There are 18 hops in total.

What is the average time in milliseconds from the tools site to the Curtin server? Summing up each of the attempts we get 2946, 2745, and 2773 milliseconds. So the average is 2821milliseconds, or simply almost 3 seconds. Pretty quick considering it’s around 17,000 kilometres according to my Google Earth measurement - I’m sure that’s a straight line through the centre of the earth - beat that Jules Verne!

The IP number of the hostname curtin.edu.au appears to be 134.7.179.53

Here’s a good question: As shown in the results above, time for each of the 3 attempts is not cumulative from hop to hop. However there is a general trend of increasing time per hop from first to last. From what I understand, there are 3 factors determining the hop time:

• physical connecting medium eg. copper, fibre optic
• geographic distance
• router responsiveness and busyness

No combination of these factors (that I can think of) can explain this general trend.

From the command line of my computer here, I tried a tracert curtin.edu.au

This was quicker than results from network-tools.com, naturally because we stayed within the geography of Australia. However the number of hops from Melbourne to Perth, 17, is almost identical to that from the U.S.A. Also a general trend of increasing time for later hops exists in both journeys. Why? Is the kangaroo getting tired from the long route?