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Likelylad
4th May 2001, 22:14
The good people at CNET sent these in their Tweak Freak Newsletter.

Both utilities run in ms dos. Access ms dos from: start >programs >ms dos

First is Ping.
Ping will track down the I.P.address, send a reply request and report on connection speed of a site you designate.
I'd imagine Ping would be useful when shopping for an ISP or host site.

Start > programs > ms dos prompt.
On opening ms dos, enter:
ping URL
(URL being the address of the site you wish to survey)
Ping will list I.P. address and clock speeds in milliseconds. Also will tell you if any packets are being lost via the connection.


Second is Pathtrace. (good with a lisp)
Trace how many steps your connection request takes by using the command: tracert in DOS and Windows, or: traceroute in Unix and Linux.

From the command line, type:

tracert URL
for Windows.

or:
traceroute URL (URL being the site to test)
for Unix or Linux.

CNET tried tracert www.cnet.com (http://www.cnet.com) from New Jersey and found a travel of 17 routers to get to CNET's server in California.
The more routers the request goes through, the more time it will take to reach its destination.
Ping gave the cross country trip an average 99ms time.
In contrast, the link to our local cable site went through only 4 routers, which accounts for some of its speedy 13ms Ping time.

Tracert will perform a maximum of 30 router hops by default, and will report the time needed at each hop on a line-by-line basis.

Apologies should these utilities be old-hat, but they were new to me and seemingly worth sharing with fellow semi-literates.

There's also a domain name search site.
http://www.betterwhois.com/
Will provide details on any registered site, such as, ownership; contacts; inception and expiration dates etc etc.



[This message has been edited by Likelylad (edited 04 May 2001).]