Internet and Society/Technological Infrastructure/Exercises

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  1. Run a series of traceroutes from a local IP address to a variety of IP addresses around the world.
    • To run the traceroutes from your computer's IP address:
      • In Windows, open the command prompt (Start>Run, type in "cmd") and type "tracert [address]", where "address" is either an IP address (e.g. or a domain name (e.g.
      • In Linux or Mac OS X, open a Terminal window and type "traceroute [address]".
      • Five columns will appear. The first is the line number, the second through fourth are the ping times from three attempts at each hop, and the last column is the IP address and/or name of the server hopped to. If there are stars instead of numbers in the middle columns, it means that the trace timed out on that hop and will try a different route.
    • To run traceroute from a foreign IP address to a local one, visit for a list of international route tracers. Some will let you manually input the final destination; others automatically use your computer's address.
  2. Record these addresses in a list formatted like this: and save it as a .dot file. (Note: this is the same extension as a Microsoft Word template file, so do not be alarmed if the icon changes accordingly.)
  3. Download the program Graphviz from and install it. Feel free to play around with the various options, but to end up with something like this
    • From the series of programs created by the install, run "dot."
    • Set the input file as the .dot you created.
    • Choose an output path, filename and file type.
    • Click Do layout.
    • Open your new graph!
  4. Upload your graph to your Web space.

Optional fun[edit]