IP address, domain name and whois lookups

The purpose of this assignment is to reinforce the idea of an IP address.

1. Use the nslookup command to find the IP address of www.mit.edu.
(You will have to figure out how to open up the command line window if you are not familiar with it).

2. Find the domain name of the host with the IP address 65.55.12.249.

3. Who is responsible for organization technology (OrgTechName) at www.mit.edu?

Turn in answers to these three questions along with a screen shot of the command line window showing the IP address of www.mit.edu.

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Internet surveillance -- what is your IP address?

This assignment illustrates the idea of an IP address, but, more important, gives you practice discovering how to learn something you do not know.

Your first reaction might be "that is not fair -- you did not show us how to do that," but the main point of the assignment is for you to discover how to learn using the Internet and other resources.

1. Find the IP addresses of two different computers in the same lab on our campus -- what are they? (Note that you must do this while on campus since the lab computers do not have domain names and are not "visible" from off campus).

2. Are they the same or different? Why?

3. What are the IP addresses of your computers at home?

4. If you use a Web client to go to http://www.csudh.edu and then to http://155.135.55.165, you get the same result. Why?

5. I tried to access the Web site at http://155.135.1.1 using Google Chrome, but after some time, got the error message "This web page is not available." What was the problem?

Since question one must be done on campus, I would suggest you answer it right away. You need to work from home to answer question three and the answer to questions two four and five are not obvious, so you will have to coordinate. My suggestion is that you save the answer as a Google Drive document so you can jointly edit it to arrive at a consensus on the answers, then print out the final version to turn in. (With everyone's name on it).

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IP packets and addresses

This assignment will test your understanding of the way information is transported across the Internet in packets.

Print and turn in your answers to questions 1-3 at the end of this presentation.

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Traceroute

This assignment will give you practice with traceroute and whois. More important, it gives you a concrete example of the way packets are routed on the Internet and how fast it is.

Run traceroute to www.ru.ac.za from the same location at two different times of day -- once in the morning and once in the evening.

Print the results to turn in, and answer the following questions:

Were the two routes identical? If not, explain the difference.

Run traceroute to www.ru.ac.za from two different locations (school, home, etc.).

Print the results to turn in, and answer the following questions:

Were the two routes identical? If not, explain the difference.

Look in the whois database find out which organization has registered the domain name www.ru.ac.za.

Where is it located and what is the email address of their technical contact person?

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Ping

This assignment will give you practice with ping. More important, it gives you a concrete example of the way packets are routed on the Internet and how fast it is.

Run ping to www.ru.ac.za from the same location at two different times of day -- once in the morning and once in the evening.

Post a screenshot of the results on your blog with the label "Asst. 19".

In addition to the screenshot, your post should include answers to the following questions:

1. Where is www.ru.ac.za?

2. Was the average Ping time the same in the morning as the evening? If not, explain the difference.

3. If you could Ping www.ru.ac.za from two different locations at exactly the same time, would you expect the same or different results? Explain your answer.

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Ping and traceroute

This assignment will give you practice with ping, traceroute and whois. More important, it gives you a concrete example of the way packets are routed on the Internet and how fast it is.

Run ping and traceroute to www.ru.ac.za from the same location (school, home, etc.) twice -- once in the morning and once in the evening.

Print the results to turn in, and answer the following questions:

1. Was average ping time the same in the morning as the evening? Explain your answer.
2. Was the route the same in the morning as the evening? Explain your answer.
3. Look in the whois database find out which organization has registered the domain name www.ru.ac.za and the email address of their technical contact person -- what are they?

Link to topic module