According to Path Analyzer Pro, for some reason our local newspaper’s site took a detour through international waters.
Of all of Network Utility’s (/Applications/Utilities/) tools, Traceroute is one of the most intriguing. It shows you the route that data takes to get from a server to your Mac. For example, you might do business at your local bank, but running Traceroute on the address of your online banking session will reveal how the data moves by zipping from server to server along Internet thoroughfares en route to you. It’s even cooler if you use a visual tool such as Path Analyzer Pro ($29.95 to 39.95, www.vostrom.com), which plots your data’s course against a map.
To answer your question, that first line of info isn’t important anyway - it’s just your cable modem. For some reason, when connected to the modem via a router, you’ll see the first hop, but when you jack the broadband modem directly into your Mac, the first address disappears. We’ll blame it on the shortness of the hop.
hawaiian717
April 05, 2007 at 3:30pm
You don't see the first hop when connected directly to the cable modem because it's not a router, it's basically just translating the physical layer from cable (or DSL) to Ethernet. It's acting more like a hub or switch than a router. If you notice when you connect via a router, the first hop is your router, and the second hop is at your ISP, it isn't your cable modem.
