INST 301
Introduction to Information Science
Spring 2016
Assignment H1
This assignment has two goals. First, we want you to get some
experience with how packets actually get around the Internet by using
traceroute. Second, we want to make sure that we have good two-way
email communication with you.
Use traceroute to discover the geographic location of the server
for http://www.flyonthewall.tv/casestudies.php?site=5 -- This is
kind of an interesting task because this company is located in
one place but its Web server is located in a different place. So
you can't just look at the Web site to see where the company
claims to be. By far the easiest way to perform this task is to
use a visual traceroute. One option is to download Visual Traceroute
(download the free 15 day trial, choose "add editions"). But
another that does not require downloading anything (probably a
better approach when you can manage it) is the online Monitis Visual Trace
Route Tool. Note that these system need to determine the IP
address, so the only part of the URL they need is
www.flyonthewall.com. If they have trouble looking up the IP
address for that domain name, you can use any DNS lookup tool
(for example, the one at ping.eu. Note that I found
all of these by simply doing Google searches for geographic
traceroute and for dns lookup, so there's nothing special about
these choices -- I just tried them and they worked for me so
hopefully they will work for you too. Submit the geographic
location using ELMS, along with a brief description of how you
determined that from what you saw using traceroute.
Send an email to both instructors (at oard@umd.edu and
jyothikv@umd.edu) with "[Submitting Assignment H1:YOURLASTNAME]"
in the subject line and with your name (as you prefer to be
called) and your email address (where you prefer to read email)
in the body of your message. The reason for this is to be sure
that we have an email address for you that works. We will reply
to the email (if you don't get a reply within 24 hours, let us
know!).
