Network Challenges

CS 487 Home Page

Sometimes, you just have to play around with this stuff to make sense of it all.....

So, people who suggest challenges, or provide solutions to challenges will earn brownie points. (Let's not get to concerned about what brownie points mean--mostly, it means that I know you're doing some work.)

Challenge 1: How far can it be?

Who can come up with the farthest site measured by hops in traceroute?

Measurements will be taken using traceroute from puma.cs.unm.edu. Routes must be traceable to the target machine (this rules out sites like www.microsoft.com and cycles).

Current record.

Challenge 2: How long can it take?

Time is another obvious measure of distance, but it's hard to get a reasonable and reproducible measure of time.

All measurements will be taken using "ping" from puma.cs.unm.edu.

Measurements will be taken every day at 00:00, 03:00, 06:00, 09:00, 12:00, 15:00, 18:00, and 21:00 from puma.cs.unm.edu (approximately MDT/MST). Each site will be assigned the average (simple mean) of the sampled ping times.

Any site that is inaccessible for three consecutive days will be eliminated (and cannot be resubmitted).

Each student can enter at most 2 sites at any time.

Current results.

Challenge 3: What's Microsoft up to now?

Run traceroute to www.microsoft.com, and explain the output.