Boldly going where I haven't gone before...
I downloaded the A-Tool bar and used it to ping the webct site. The average time in ms was 252.
Pinging webct.curtin.edu.au [134.7.180.156] with 32 bytes of data...
I then compared this with the time it took to ping from the network tools site the average here was 277ms.
[webct.curtin.edu.au]
Round trip time to 134.7.180.156: 272 ms
Round trip time to 134.7.180.156: 277 ms
Round trip time to 134.7.180.156: 293 ms
Round trip time to 134.7.180.156: 280 ms
Round trip time to 134.7.180.156: 268 ms
Round trip time to 134.7.180.156: 270 ms
Round trip time to 134.7.180.156: 277 ms
Round trip time to 134.7.180.156: 299 ms
Round trip time to 134.7.180.156: 267 ms
Round trip time to 134.7.180.156: 270 ms
Average time over 10 pings: 277.3 ms
The ping from the A-Tools was marginally quicker (we are talking in milliseconds here). I had no expectation that this would be quicker than traceroute for example but it’s interesting to note that the same task over similar tools at a similar time (eg within the same minute or so) yield different results.
The intrepid explorer I am, I then used traceroute (can you say tracerouted??) from my pc to webct1.curtin.edu.au there was one less hop (19 in total) than the earlier traceroute (performed on Sunday).
The first series of hops were different via servers in the US, then via several states of Australia, but the last hops were the same.
I Googled the name of the first server to see where it was located...
The planet.com is a US company. When I arrived at their website, I was offered the opportunity to chat to a sales rep:
Curious to explore more about 'identity and location', I had a quick chat. Here is the transcript (although I removed the sales rep's actual name as I did not ask their permission to publish in my blog.I have called her Sales Rep.
Please wait while we find an agent to assist you...
You have been connected to [Sales Rep].
Sales Rep: Hello, my name is Sales Rep, I will be your Sales Representative. How may I assist you today? (If you currently have an account with us, please provide your Orbit/ServerCommand login.)
Customer [that's me]: Hello Sales, I dont have an account with your company.
Sales Rep: ok - how may i ehlp (sic) you?
Customer: I was interested to know what your company did ( I had looked up the planet and saw this opportunity to chat. Are you are real person?
[Pause of about 10 seconds]
Sales Rep: yes - i am a real person Sales Rep: we offer self-managed dedicated server hosting
Customer: Yes I am learning about servers and hosting in my course... I really dont need to buy anything today Sales but I appreciate your time. Have a good day.
Sales Rep: thank you!
Customer: Good bye
Thank you for using InstantService. You may now close this window. Your session has ended. You may now close this window.
End of transcript and end of post.
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