Ping and Tracert

I was under the impression that Ping and Tracert were similar utilities
with tracert giving a wee bit more information about the connection.

Why is it then, if I ping bbc.co.uk I get response times of around 30ms
whereas if I tracert the same address it appears to take much longer.

Geoff Lane


Geoff Lane

On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:35:06 +0100, Geoff Lane wrote:
> I was under the impression that Ping and Tracert were similar utilities
> with tracert giving a wee bit more information about the connection.
>
> Why is it then, if I ping bbc.co.uk I get response times of around 30ms
> whereas if I tracert the same address it appears to take much longer.

tracert is going to be timing each node/hop to bbc.co.uk with dns
look ups along the way,

Try again with
tracert -d bbc.co.uk
to suppress DNS look ups

On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:35:06 +0100, Geoff Lane wrote:

> I was under the impression that Ping and Tracert were similar utilities
> with tracert giving a wee bit more information about the connection.

There is no tracert in Linux. Why are you asking a windows question here?
Are the windows lusers too stupid to answer it?

On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:35:06 +0100, Geoff Lane wrote:

> I was under the impression that Ping and Tracert were similar utilities
> with tracert giving a wee bit more information about the connection.

I've never heard of "tracert". Perhaps you mean "traceroute"? Perhaps
the admin that runs your computer put tracert in as an abbreviation
(though I'd have used perhaps "trt" to maximize the minimization {8^).

Traceroute - at least the version I use; I know that there are a couple
about - can transmit either "high" UDP or ICMP packets. Ping, as far as
I know, only uses ICMP. Traceroute defaults to UDP, so naive use of the
two programs could yield different results if ICMP and UDP packets are
treated differently.

Note that there's also a tcptraceroute because TCP can be treated
differently than ICMP or UDP.

Traceroute also sends packets with a slowly increasing TTL, thus checking
time for each hop. Ping doesn't do this as far as I know. But this "hop
testing" needs to be taken with a grain of salt, in that hops in one
direction may not correspond to the hops in the other direction (routing
being naturally asymmetrical).

Ping does have a "flood" option which can be useful in some cases (ie.
like the old "spray" utility); I don't recall seeing this in traceroute.

- Andrew

Dave Uhring wrote:

>> I was under the impression that Ping and Tracert were similar utilities
>> with tracert giving a wee bit more information about the connection.
>
> There is no tracert in Linux. Why are you asking a windows question here?

I was under the impression that the message header should have shown
that I posted to two groups (uk.comp.home-networking) and the
Followup-To: this group. I've checked it and it doesn't show this other
group.

As for my typing tracert, perhaps I should have said 'or traceroute in Linux

> Are the windows lusers too stupid to answer it?

Not really but Linux users are generally more techie :-)

Geoff Lane

On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:44:24 -0500, I waved a wand and this message
magically appears in front of Dave Uhring:

> > I was under the impression that Ping and Tracert were similar
> > utilities with tracert giving a wee bit more information about the
> > connection.
>
> There is no tracert in Linux. Why are you asking a windows question
> here? Are the windows lusers too stupid to answer it?

More to the point, why is tracert still seven letters long in Vista,
when long file names was first implemented in Windows 95 *sniggers*
back in the mid-1990s?
--
http://www.munted.org.uk

Fearsome grindings.

Bit Twister wrote:

>> I was under the impression that Ping and Tracert were similar utilities
>> with tracert giving a wee bit more information about the connection.
>>
>> Why is it then, if I ping bbc.co.uk I get response times of around 30ms
>> whereas if I tracert the same address it appears to take much longer.
>
> tracert is going to be timing each node/hop to bbc.co.uk with dns
> look ups along the way,
>
> Try again with
> tracert -d bbc.co.uk
> to suppress DNS look ups

Right, done that and from my machine it gives 7 hops to bbc, all except
my local machine give around 32ms

Ping gives similar times but doesn't ping still have 7 hops to reach the
bbc site.

Geoff Lane

On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:34:26 +0100, Geoff Lane wrote:
>
> Right, done that and from my machine it gives 7 hops to bbc, all except
> my local machine give around 32ms
>
> Ping gives similar times but doesn't ping still have 7 hops to reach the
> bbc site.

Yes, but ping is not testing each hop like tracert.

Alex Buell wrote:

> More to the point, why is tracert still seven letters long in Vista,
> when long file names was first implemented in Windows 95 *sniggers*
> back in the mid-1990s?

Yes, it does make you wonder..

Geoff Lane

Andrew Gideon wrote:

>> I was under the impression that Ping and Tracert were similar utilities
>> with tracert giving a wee bit more information about the connection.
>
> I've never heard of "tracert". Perhaps you mean "traceroute"?

Yes, quite right, tracert is windows version.

Thanks for follow up explanation, I was forgetting that both commands
use different protocols.

Geoff Lane