TraceRoute Assignment

I had originally set my mind on some physical visualizations of maps until I realized how much of this is still need to comprehend. I don’t think I’ve quite made it over the hump yet, I still feel pretty stuck in the weeds. I feel like I should be feeling some kind of awe or excitement from this information but it’s just not registering yet. I don’t think I completely get it yet.

So I decided to start from the basics. In working on this assignment, I really just wanted to conversationally hash out the protocols with someone so that I could add some human layer to what feels like a very sterile series of details. So I wrote a little bash script to “chat with” about the steps of the traceroute. I thought that this would make it feel more like a conversation, allowing me to both ask an answer questions in the making and participation of the script.

This really did help me paint a mental map of the spaces even though there are not many visual cues to that map in the activity. I suppose I focused on the process rather than the outcome. I feel like I understand slightly more than I did when I went into the process.

I wrote a short python script that uses the os library to execute the traceroute on a website and then parses the data to determine the amount of hops and the locations.

Honestly Tom, I don’t really understand protocols enough to write this next paragraph. I’d like to research this protocol 0.ae11.gw13.nyc1.alter.net, also referred to as 140.222.234.191 which came up a lot in my traceroute for my own website but the information that I’m getting when I research it is super opaque. I am going to go over the slides again and reattempt to write this paragraph this week. Here’s what I do know: