trace route

Lately all my internet accesses become very slow. even when i accessed a page that is in the same city. So I made some tests with route tracing. Funny things and some of them made me wonder what's going on there.

For example, when you go to:
http://www.internetipaddress.com/traceroute.aspx
and enter www.blitzbasic.com, it traces the route from their server (texas) to blitzbasic, looks funny.

However, tracing the route to my IP gave me some ways I couldn't understand : from texas to virginia, then across the continent to california, then back to Maryland, then finally across the ocean to the uk, then to europe.

I'd understand the question "why to virgina" x_x but I really wonder why it goes from Virginia to LA and then back to the east coast.

Your ISP may be routing you due to maintenance or for reasons beyond their control.

i've noticed more and more of this lately as well... some days just connecting to a site takes forever... then other days it's as fast as greased lightning...

i did something similar, and found that there appeared to be no rhyme or reason to the routing patterns... and a request to the same ip within less than 2 minutes will result in a completely different route...

it's wayyyy beyond me...

--Mike

That's nothing!

Mine ends on the opposite end of the country from where I am.

     1      0 ms      0 ms      0 ms    67.18.29.185       UNITED STATES    TEXAS    DALLAS    THEPLANET.COM INTERNET SERVICES INC
     2      0 ms      0 ms      0 ms    69.41.250.73       UNITED STATES    TEXAS    DALLAS    THEPLANET.COM INTERNET SERVICES INC
     3      0 ms      0 ms      0 ms    12.96.160.42       UNITED STATES    TEXAS    DALLAS    THEPLANET.COM INTERNET SERVICES
     4      1 ms      1 ms      0 ms    70.85.127.74       UNITED STATES    TEXAS    DALLAS    THEPLANET.COM INTERNET SERVICES INC
     5      0 ms      0 ms      0 ms    70.85.127.37       UNITED STATES    TEXAS    DALLAS    THEPLANET.COM INTERNET SERVICES INC
     6      1 ms      1 ms      1 ms    168.215.241.149    UNITED STATES    TEXAS    DALLAS    TIME WARNER TELECOM INC
     7      1 ms      1 ms      1 ms    66.192.246.213     UNITED STATES    -    -    TIME WARNER TELECOM INC
     8     22 ms     21 ms     22 ms    66.192.255.93      UNITED STATES    -    -    TIME WARNER TELECOM INC
     9     22 ms     22 ms     30 ms    66.192.244.20      UNITED STATES    -    -    TIME WARNER TELECOM INC
    10     25 ms     24 ms     24 ms    66.192.252.102     UNITED STATES    CALIFORNIA    SAN FRANCISCO    TIME WARNER TELECOM INC
    11     71 ms     71 ms     71 ms    154.11.4.69        CANADA    BRITISH COLUMBIA    VANCOUVER    TELUS COMMUNICATIONS INC
    12     72 ms     72 ms     72 ms    208.181.240.53     CANADA    ONTARIO    LONDON    TELUS COMMUNICATIONS INC

I live in Vancouver, BC... it passes there and goes on to Ontario.
I had no idea those things behaved like that :)

Yay! Another toy!
This will keep me amused all day tomorrow.

If you are on cable you can try this.
unplug your cable modem.
open up the administration on your router and change the mac
address.
after the mac is changed unplug the router.
plug the cable modem back in and let it sync
plug the router in and let it boot.
you should have a different IP address than you had before.
It probably won't change the route but it will rule out any
local traffic problems.

some isp's like ntl in certain areas (like mine!) will only allow certain mac addresses to work with their modem, you have to register a new mac address

Trace route does not actually trace the route a single packet travels. It simply pings with an increasing TTL. Due to the nature of packet switched networks, the chance of different packets traveling the exact same route every time, is not particularly good, unless you're connected through a tier 1 ISP.