How is the traceroute different when going to www.cisco.com from the command prompt (see Part 1) rather than from the online website? (Your results may vary depending upon where you are located geographically, and which ISP is providing connectivity to your school.)
In the command prompt, there isn't too many hops to get to www.cisco.com. Using the online website is too many hops and the device can't track it.
Compare the tracert from Part 1 that goes to Africa with the tracert that goes to Africa from the web interface. What difference do you notice?
The tracert from part 1 is far longer and took longer to process the trip to Africa than the web interface based tracert. That one is far shorter and takes less time.
Some of the traceroutes have the abbreviation asymm in them. Any guesses as to what this means? What is its significance?
"asymm" means the the path to the hop and back have been different (asymmetric). This usually happens when there is some link in one direction jammed or the network architecture encourages different paths for the different directions. The number after asymm shows the grade of asymmetry (i.e. how many hops are different).