Lab Name Exploring Network Routers & Reliability by finding the Longest Traceroute on the Internet.
Subject Area Computer Science: Networking
Grade 9 - 12
Topic Network Routers & Reliability.
Experiment Title Finding the longest traceroute on the Internet.
Hardware WiFi Network Adapter (built-in to laptops).
Software Computer command line or terminal.
Number of Sessions to teach the topic 1
Educational standards to be addressed
  • AP CSPrinciples Enduring Knowledge Standards:
    • EK6.2.1A
      The Internet and the systems built on it are hierarchical and redundant.
    • EK6.2.1D
      Routing on the Internet is fault tolerant and redundant.
    • EK6.2.2B
      The redundancy of routing (ie. More than one way to route data) between two points on the Internet increases the reliability of the Internet and helps it scale to more devices and more people.
  • CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards:
    • 3A-NI-04
      Evaluate the scalability and reliability of networks, by describing the relationship between routers, switches, servers, topology, and addressing.
COSMOS concepts to be used for the lab Router, Packets, Packet Loss, Node, TCP vs UDP traffic, Network Topology, fault-tolerant Network.
K12 Educational Goals (How the educational goals are achieved through teaching using the experiment, how the topic is connected to the COSMOS concepts used) The experiment uses the terminal to traceroute a specific path to learn about the structure between client and server and how routers decide which path to take.
Short Description and Walk-through of the experiment
  1. Students perform a computerless experiment with paper “packets” in the classroom to demonstrate basic routing and packet loss
  2. Students use traceroute to try to find the most number of hops to reach their desired host
Testbed mapping of the experiment
  • Traceroute can be done BETWEEN different nodes on a testbed.
  • Traceroute can be initiated from different testbeds locations to compare their paths

Experiment Execution

Download the Worksheet, and follow the instructions to start the experiment

Experiment Material

NGSS Lesson Plan

© 2018 COSMOS Project. Created by Joel Bianchi, Frederick Douglas Academy I
Andrew Rose, Trinity School.