points in the internet

netuser786

Junior Member
Apr 21, 2012
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hi,
i am a beginner in networking area. for curiosity i started reading about several protocols. i also tried linux terminal commands for example ping, traceroute.
i read about traceroute that it traces the path through certain points in the internet. i wanted to know what is meant by points in internet. is it autonomous systems? any help is appreciated.

Thanks
 

Smoblikat

Diamond Member
Nov 19, 2011
5,184
107
106
each point is actually called a hop. It shows the default ateway of each router youre pinging.
 

imagoon

Diamond Member
Feb 19, 2003
5,199
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Hops and routes. The 2 posts above call them default routes which is incorrect except for your local router. A route and a default route are 2 distinct things with differing functions with the same end result (hopefully getting your packets to where they need to go.)

The default route (0.0.0.0) is the route selected from the routing table when nothing else matches. Once your out on the internet you will be using route data from the routing core on the Internet currently using BGP.

All this means is that each of those hopes show a router that has a route to the next router until you get to your destination network and eventually the node.

You need to be careful with terms because on the Internet an autonomous system (AS) is a BGP routing element that handles all of its own internal networks.
 

Gryz

Golden Member
Aug 28, 2010
1,551
203
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Lots of vague terminology used here.

To be precises, the IP addresses you will see are the IP addresses of the incoming interface of the router at each hop along the path towards your destination. Incoming interface meaning: the interface on which a router receives your traceroute-packet.

Small fact. TCP/IP is a little weird in addressing. Not every device has an IP address. No, every interface on every device has its own IP address. Therefor some devices can have multiple IP addresses. In general routers have multiple IP addresses, while end-systems (PCs, mobile devices, servers, etc) have only one IP address.

To make matters more complex, you can even create "imaginary" interfaces to add more IP addresses to a device (aka loopback interfaces). Or you can assign multiple addresses to an interface (aka secondary addresses). Or you can use less IP addresses (borrowing the IP address of another interface, aka "unnumbered").

This last paragraph was just added to confuse you. :)
 
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