Hello friends,
Be prepared for a surprising joyride that you might have not experienced before.
We often visit a website.But have you ever thought where exactly the servers the routers of that website are situated.just perform the following task:-
1.Go to your command prompt.
2.There type
c:\windows\tracert target.com
where target.com can either be an IP-address or a hostname like www.santabanta.com.To see further help on how to use tracert command you can type
c:\windows\tracert/?

this will give you entire description on tracert.Remember this method holds true for all DOS-commands.
for example when you do this:-


C:\Documents and Settings\XYZ>tracert google.com

Tracing route to google.com [64.233.187.99]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 19 ms 21 ms 19 ms 59.95.64.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 50 ms 49 ms 48 ms 125.17.12.9
5 45 ms 47 ms 45 ms 125.21.167.25
6 364 ms 364 ms 362 ms sl-gw39-nyc-10-2.sprintlink.net [144.223.157.149
]
7 366 ms 363 ms 366 ms sl-bb21-nyc-3-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.13.57]

8 408 ms 407 ms 406 ms sl-bb25-nyc-11-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.13.1]
9 431 ms * 421 ms sl-bb20-msq-2-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.74]
10 422 ms 418 ms 402 ms sl-bb21-msq-15-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.9.110]

11 371 ms 365 ms 348 ms sl-bb27-rly-8-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.73]
12 408 ms 411 ms 411 ms sl-bb23-rly-13-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.14.141]

13 424 ms 415 ms 411 ms sl-bb24-rly-10-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.14.130]

14 375 ms 374 ms 373 ms sl-st22-ash-5-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.155]

15 363 ms 371 ms 359 ms 160.81.98.34
16 344 ms 349 ms * 209.85.130.16
17 325 ms * * 72.14.238.136
18 339 ms 332 ms 335 ms 72.14.239.21
19 339 ms 327 ms 341 ms 216.239.49.226
20 336 ms 323 ms 328 ms jc-in-f99.google.com [64.233.187.99]

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\XYZ>

this is the typical output you will get on executing the tracert command.
ANALYSIS:-
Now let us analyze one by one what we have explored till now.whenever a particular chunk of data is sent from a source system to the destination system,they are first routed through a number of routers(on the way to destination system).The typical path taken by these data packets sent by source to destination is as follows:-

source system------> router of the source network------->router of the source network's ISP(internet service provider)------>router of destination's ISP----->router of destination system------>destination system.

In the above example we can the first 3 fields are the time in milliseconds required for the ping request to complete.The fourth field gives the hostname and the IP-address of each of the router the data-packets pass through.Another important thing is that where ever you see a *(asterix) we can conclude the presence of a firewall which has prevented the information about the router system to leak out.
A lot of tracing tools are available on internet.they provide the path of data packets on the world maps.You can try one such tool at http://visualiptrace.visualware.com/
follow the following steps:-
1.Once you open the webpage enter the hostname of the website you want to trace say for example www.santabanta.com
2.make sure that pop-up windows are not blocked on your browser or else you will not see the result.
3.when the trace is complete you can clearly see the chain of path on world map.you can also see the details about the owner the operating system of the server and such other information.
Alternatively you can buy this software or download a free trial.
now an interesting prank you can play on your friends .Let's say that you are chatting with your friend and you want to find where your friend is? that is so simple......
1.Go to command prompt and type
c:\windows\netstat -n
this will give you your own IP-address along with the IP-address of your friend with whom you are connected.
2.Now once you have the IP-address you can either use tracert command or the visualtrace utility to find the exact location of tour friend.
So try this stuff and I am confident you will find it useful.Please leave a comment if you find this article useful.Have a nice time and happy hackingggggggg.......