The ping function is an inbuilt command used by a computer to access a certain resource on the internet by command. The most common ping function is done from the command window in Microsoft windows operating systems. This function allows a person to send a command to a certain internet connection (IP address) and receive a reply from the pinged resource or device (ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.htm, paragraph 2).
In the ping function, a computer sends a command to the device it wants to access or resource and waits for a reply. The reply time varies according to the strength of the connection and the connectivity if it is done remotely. In windows environment, this function is in .Net Internetworking directory and is used mostly to test for connectivity (ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html, paragraph 4)
Looking at the operation of a ping function, a user opens the windows command prompt and types the word ‘ping’, hit the space bar and then write the IP address of the internet device or resource. The user then hits the ‘enter’ button on the keyboard. This moves the cursor to the next line and as the cursor blinks, it generates information on the connectivity to the requested port and device. If the device is connected to the internet or the machine sending the request by whichever means (can be a peer to peer connection), it receives the request and sends a reply (autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/functions/Ping.htm paragraph 1).
The duration between the time of sending the request (pinging) and the time the reply is received is what is called round-trip time. This forms the whole sending and feedback loop in a connection between any two computers connected either peer to peer of any other form of network.
In most cases, the ping function sends out data to the requested machine depending on the size of the data bus in use. In most modern computers, the microprocessors are 32-bit or 64 bit depending on some other specifications that are not relevant in this lesson. A 32-bit machine (operates on a 32-bit operating system) usually sends out (pings) 32 bytes of data in four packets. Likewise, a 64-bit OS based machine pings with 64 bytes of data in four packets. The reply received by the machine is on the four packets and if any gets lost, a reply of the lost packet is given. In some cases, the host pinged is unreachable thus the ping function replies with 100% loss accompanied by a message of the lack of connectivity to the requested resource or host (autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/functions/Ping.htm paragraph 6).
In the experiment, I used five different locations which were in different parts of the world. The round-trip time or duration varied according to distance of the host from my location, connectivity and the connection mode. In one connection, I pinged a laptop which was in the same lab as I but was connected to my laptop through wireless network. The round-trip time was longer compared to when I connected by laptop and the host laptop to the LAN and repeated the process. This was mainly due to the signal strength which dictated the connection speed. Wireless connection had a maximum connection speed of 54Mbs-1 while the LAN was capable of achieving speed of 100 Mbs-1. In the same experiment, I pinged for the other machine using 64 bytes of data instead of the 32 bytes I had used previously. I observed that the more the data used to ping, the more the round-trip duration. This led to my general conclusion that speed of data transmission is inversely proportional to the size of data requested.
Another factor which appeared to have affected the connectivity was amount of data. When one requests for a connection using large amounts of data, it takes long for a reply to be processed. This can be attributed to the fact that most microprocessors processing the requests queue the data thus take long to process large chunks of data as compared to small amounts of data (www.freesoft.org/CIE/Topics/53.htm. paragraph 4).
Looking at the operation of trace route tool, it determines the lengths of hops within route followed by a network connection. This tool determines the connection time to the destination as well as determines the connection rate and delays suffered by data packets on transit. Determining the hops in each of the connection, I was able to establish a relation that the higher the hop, the longer the delay.
b. Looking deep into the operation basis of tracert, I observed that the hops had definite delay for a specific data amount. This means that the larger the data and the longer the route, the longer the delay consequently causing a higher hop (network-tools.com/).
There appears to be a great relationship between the operation of a tracert and the ping function. The operations return almost the same information but in different formats. Looking at the format of information that the message is displayed in the tracert, hops show delays which when added give the round-trip duration. The only difference is that tracerts are mostly used router requests while ping requests are mostly employed in internet connections (network-tools.com/).
In most networks, the common used protocol is the OSI (open systems interconnections) which is a model consisting of 7 layers. Each layer has its own importance in the data model and each is placed at a certain point. So as to make a full data packet to be relayed between the source and the destination, the model encapsulates the intended data for transfer in a frame. The frame contains among destination address, the source address and other relevant information for the data being transferred. In most cases, the frames are used to trace the destination of the data and the route to follow. In this part of the data packet, the routers or other intermediary network devices decode the destination and helps direct the packet towards the destination using the shortest route possible (Ethernet Frame).
Other contents of the frame are the synchronization bits which show where data begins and ends. This other bits present may help in error detection but in most frames, retransmission or reception notices are not accorded. This makes it hard for a sender to know if the data sent has been received or not. Looking at the actual structure of the frame, there is a permeable (2 octets), start of frame delimiter (1 octet), destination and source octets (each 6 in length), payload and frame check or error detection (Drew, 2001).
In summary, the two frames contain the following information.
Closely examining the two frames, data is being transmitted between a source machine and a host machine. The MAC addresses of the two machines can be computed by converting the two byte hexadecimals and separating them using dot. The main message being transmitted is contained in the payload section of the frame. The respective addresses are given by conversion of the hexadecimal numbers given to decimal equivalents (Data Link Layer)
In conclusion, many are the times the data packet gets lost but can’t be traced its path or final destination. To counter this, some new technologies are trying to include parity and destination acceptance bit to ensure that the data packets are received and in case of getting lost, they can be traced (Network Working Group of the IETF, 1988).
References
Data Link Layer, the TCP/IP Guide. 2005-09-20. Retrieved 2010-01-31
Network Working Group of the IETF, 1988, RFC1042: A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams over IEEE 802 Networks.
Drew H. 2001. Drew Heywood's Windows 2000 Network Services, Prentice Hall Inc
Ethernet Frame. Retrieved on 2012-03-20, Ethernet transmission is strange, in that the byte order is big-endian (leftmost byte is sent first), but bit order little-endian (rightmost, or LSB (Least Significant Bit) of the byte is sent first)
Ping section
<http://network-tools.com/>
http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/functions/Ping.htm
http://www.freesoft.org/CIE/Topics/53.htm.
http://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html.
