The journey of an internet packet: Exploring networks with traceroute

Tracert is more powerful than you think:

There are a lot of good talks on Tracert.

This one is pretty good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGYAW5z6BJc

The article OP links to is only talking from the perspective of an internal network. Tracrt in a 10. network is boring info.

In the vid I posted, he gives you really good common advice about using tracert to show you actually the physical layout of the path:

https://i.imgur.com/LxN9Mr4.png THen by seeing the carrier, you can also see where there is not just a change in carrier, but also that indicates that at that location is a datacenter....

You can go onto DatacenterMaps and find out who/what/where a DC is....

(There is a really exceptional tech talk on tracert thats quite long that goes into bitlevel detail of weaponized tracrt - but I cant find it)....

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WRT DataCenterMaps -- There was an HNer that posted about mapping nuclear facilities (active and decommissioned) - and by using his map, the UnderSeaCableMap and the DataCenterMap - then by looking at shipping supply-chains for components used_by/made_by/received_at companies that are either Data Centers, or NVIDIA - we could track where large scale AI componentry is being installed into what data centers, which are fed by which Nuclear Power Plants, who have to report on their Consumption Graph - and which Cable Infra is likely feeding each DC.

We can see where AI traffic flows - and by using tracert at a deeper level - we can see exactly the AI's Physical NeuroNet' - and find a way to measure its power consumption and physical footprint.

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HNer @externedguy "..built interactive map of active & decommissioned nuclear stations/reactors"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41189056

(I correlated the Nuclear reactor locations with DataCenters, undersea cable endpoints (which will be near both nukes and datacenters)

As they could be layers - and we track shipments and we can see where AI consumes:

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...if we add the layers of the SubmarinCableMap [0] DataCenterMap [1] - and we begin to track shipments

And

https://i.imgur.com/zO0yz6J.png -- Left is nuke, top = cables, bottom = datacenters. I went to ImportYeti to look into the NVIDIA shipments: https://i.imgur.com/k9018EC.png

And you look at the suppliers that are coming from Taiwan, such as the water-coolers and power cables to sus out where they may be shipping to, https://i.imgur.com/B5iWFQ1.png -- but instead, it would be better to find shipping lables for datacenters that are receiving containers from Taiwan, and the same suppliers as NVIDIA for things such as power cables. While the free data is out of date on ImportYeti - it gives a good supply line idea for NVIDIA... with the goal to find out which datacenters that are getting such shipments, you can begin to measure the footprint of AI as it grows, and which nuke plants they are likely powered from.

Then, looking into whatever reporting one may access for the consumption/util of the nuke's capacity in various regions, we can estimate the power footprint of growing Global Compute.

DataCenterNews and all sorts of datasets are available - and now the ability to create this crawler/tracker is likely full implementable

https://i.imgur.com/gsM75dz.png https://i.imgur.com/a7nGGKh.png

[0] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

[1] https://www.datacentermap.com/

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And 8 months back I posted:

In the increasingly interconnected global economy, the reliance on Cloud Services raises questions about the national security implications of data centers. As these critical economic infrastructure sites, often strategically located underground, underwater, or in remote-cold locales, play a pivotal role, considerations arise regarding the role of military forces in safeguarding their security. While physical security measures and location obscurity provide some protection, the integration of AI into various aspects of daily life and the pervasive influence of cloud-based technologies on devices, as evident in CES GPT-enabled products, further accentuates the importance of these infrastructure sites. Notably, instances such as the seizure of a college thesis mapping communication lines in the U.S. underscore the sensitivity of disclosing key communications infrastructure.

Companies like AWS, running data centers for the Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community (IC), demonstrate close collaboration between private entities and defense agencies. The question remains: are major cloud service providers actively involved in a national security strategy to protect the private internet infrastructure that underpins the global economy, or does the responsibility solely rest with individual companies?

(There was talk on this topic recently in the news)

EDIT:

If you like this sort of networking - then courses/material like this are great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih3KgQnT6T0 ---

I still cant find the defcon-style talk that really dives into tracert sorcery....

On the other hand traceroute isn’t real[0]

0: https://gekk.info/articles/traceroute.htm

> It is, generally speaking, not possible to call AT&T and say "Hey, when I try to ping one of your subscribers in California from a Level3 circuit in New York, I'm hitting a routing loop."

I’ve reported similar things to my isp and they’ve changed their lock prefs to send the traffic via a different peer and bypass the problem.

It always amazes me in-depth HN gets on pretty much any subject, yet the most basic cursory network page gets massive response

Is there simply a total lack of understanding of how networks work in the tech community?

this article is informative but misleading. i do the testing at a big ISP (your packets go over us for at least something). we test traceroute. we complain to vendors when traceroute doesn't work right. we do investigate weird traceroutes.