Your Internet speed is measured in two ways. Download speed and upload speed. Download speed is how fast information travels from a computer on the internet down to your computer. Upload speed is how fast information can travel from your computer up to another computer on the internet.

Most things we do on the internet require a lot of download speed, but not much upload speed. Websurfing, for example, is mostly download speed. Receiving email is downloading. Sending email is uploading. If you share files and someone downloads a file from you, that’s uploading.

The download speed on your Internet connection is faster than your upload speed. I won’t get into the technical details as to why that is. That’s why it may seem fast when you are surfing the web, but when you send an email with a picture attached, it seems slow.

When you sign up for internet access from your phone company or cable company, they will have different packages you can get that offer different speeds. For example, you can get RoadRunner (from Time Warner Cable) in speeds of .768/.128 mbps, 1.5/.384 mbps, 7/.512 mbps, 15/.756 mbps, and 30/5 mbps. mbps stands for Million Bits Per Second. The first speed is the download speed and the speed after the slash is the upload speed.

What to know what speed you are really getting? Run a test. Just go to www.bandwidthplace.com and run a test. It will tell you what your download and upload speeds are. When you run the test, make sure there is no internet activity on your computer or any other computer on your network or it can skew the test. Also be aware that the advertised speeds are maximum, not average speeds. You should also know that some advertise burst speeds. That means even though you are paying for a download speed of 7 mpbs, it there may be times when it will burst and go faster, depending on network traffic.

For example, here at Computer Troubleshooters, I ran the test. We got a download speed of 14.5 mbps and an upload speed of 1.8 mbps. Our internet service is for 15 mbps download and .756. So the resulting download speed was pretty close to 15, but the upload speed was more than twice as fast as what is advertised thanks to a burst of speed.

By the way, if you run the test, be aware that it may show the results in kbps or mbps. Kbps is thousands and mbps is millions. I showed all of the numbers in this article in mbps. 1 mbps is faster than 512 kbps. 512 kbps is .512 mbps.

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One of the great things about having a laptop is being able to connect to public wi-fi and get online when you are at the airport, the coffee shop, hotel, or many other places. But like many great things, using public wi-fi has risk.

When you are at home or work and you use wireless your wireless connect is (or at least, should be) encrypted. If you have any kind of wireless security in place, then the information flowing to and from  your laptop over the wireless connection is encrypted. However, when you use public wi-fi, this is not the case. That means that anyone with the right software can intercept your wireless signal and read the information flowing to and from your laptop.

Internet Explorer can transmit and receive information securely, but when it does this is up to the website you are on. Most websites use encryption when you are entering your login name and password or when you are entering sensitive information like credit card numbers and personal information. But pretty much all other cases are not secure. For example, if you use yahoo mail, when you enter your login information, that is secure, but once logged in, it’s not secure so someone could intercept that and read your email.

This is one webmail provider that does keep it secure while you are reading your email. That’s Google mail. So if you use Gmail, it’s encrypted the whole time. If you use an email client like Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird, Incredimail, and so forth, those are not secure over public wi-fi.

Another risk of using public wi-fi is that someone might be able to directly connect to your laptop. Another risk, although low-tech, is that someone could be looking over your shoulder to see what you are doing.

Below are some safety tips for using public wi-fi.

• We recommend a good software firewall. If you have XP, the firewall built-in to XP isn’t good enough for public wi-fi. Get yourself a good firewall like Sunbelt Firewall. Vipre Premium includes Sunbelt Firewall. Some versions of AVG have a firewall. A good free firewall is Comodo Firewall, but installing it is tricky or you end up with a lot of software you don’t want. If you have Vista or Windows 7, that firewall is fine.

• Turn off peer to peer (also known as as-hoc) wireless connections. How you do this depends on what version of Windows you have, which wireless card you have, and which wireless utility you are using. There are too many different combinations for us to include instructions on doing this for all of them. If you want instructions for how to do this, let us know. We can remote into your computer and show you how to do it. 

• Turn off File and Printer Sharing.
  This will help prevent someone from snooping around on your hard drive. The instructions for doing this will vary depending on which version of Windows you have. If you want to know how to do this, reply to this email, let us know which version of Windows you have (XP, Vista, Windows 7) and ask for instructions and we will email them to you. 

• Many companies use VPN. VPN is a way to connect to a remote network. VPN connections are encrypted and secure. If your company provides  you with VPN access to their network, connect to it when you are using public wi-fi and that will secure your wireless.

  If your company doesn’t provide VPN, or you want the same protection for your personal laptop, then go to hotspotshield.com. This free service uses VPN to provide this type of security.

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You may have seen a story in the news about how the Internet is running out of IP addresses. Don’t panic. Here’s what you need to know about it.

Every device on the internet must have a unique numerical address. This address is known as an IP address.  IP stands for Internet Protocol, in case you were wondering. If your computer is connected to the internet, your computer has an IP address. . You may not see it, but it’s there. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be able to access anything on the Internet. For most computers, their IP address is dynamic meaning it may change from time to time.

An IP address is four numbers separated by periods. Each number can be as big as 255. It looks something like this: 208.69.36.230. With its current design, the IP address allows for about 4 billion unique IP addresses. Back in the 70’s when they designed it, that sounded like much more than ever would be needed. But they failed to realize what the future would bring.

In the 1980’s, they began to realize the limitation of the IP Address. In the 1990’s, they knew something had to be done. So they began working on a new scheme for IP addresses. Estimates for how long it will be before we run out of IP addresses vary widely because there are a lot of factors that I won’t bore you with. Some say we will run out by September 2011 while other say it will be longer.

What happens if we run out? It doesn’t mean the Internet will crash and not work. It just means that there may be times when some computers can’t get an IP address assigned and, therefore, can’t get on the internet.  New computers that have static IP addresses (not dynamic) will not be able to get new static IP addresses because none are available.

This is a major problem, but there is a solution available. The original scheme for IP addresses is now called IP version 4, or IPv4 for short. The new scheme that was created is called IPv6. Whereas IPv4 was four numbers (each number can be a value from 0 to 255) separated by periods, IPv6 is eight numbers separated by colons and each number is a 4 digit hexadecimal number. It looks something like this: 2001:0db8:98a3:0000:0000:45e2:0370:7334.

You might say, “No big deal. Let’s just start using IPv6.” Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. IPv6 is already in use, but only on a small scale. In order for usage of IPv6 to increase there are a lot of upgrades that have to happen, both software and hardware. Those upgrades cost money. Because of that, the move to IPv6 has been slow.

So now you are wondering how this affects you. Here’s what you should know. IPv4 and IPv6 can both operate simultaneously on the internet. Most of the initial work to switch to IPv6 has to be done by the Internet Service Providers. Until they have done the work they need to do, there’s not much you can do about it.

At some point, home users will have to get new Modems (Cable, DSL, etc.) and Routers and make sure IPv6 is enabled on their computers. Businesses will need to upgrade that same equipment, but in addition, they may also need to upgrade switches, access points, servers, and certain software that communicates over the internet. But it will be at least a year or two. And it will start with the biggest companies and with the government. It will slowly trickle down to medium sized companies, small companies, and home users. This will be a transition that will take years.

The bottom line for small businesses and home users is that you really won’t have to worry about this for at least a couple of years, probably longer.

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As you probably know, the latest version of Internet Explorer is version 8. Microsoft is working on the next version of Internet Explorer. You guessed it. Version 9. Here’s the poop on it.

Like every new version of IE, Microsoft says that this version will be faster. I’ll believe that when I see it.

IE 9 won’t be getting a lot of new user interface features. The big changes are under the hood. It will supposedly support a lot of the newer technologies that IE8 doesn’t support, or doesn’t support very well. I won’t bore you with a list of those technologies.

What may surprise you, however, is that IE9 will not work on XP. It will only work on Windows Server 2008, Vista, and Windows 7.

There is not set release date for it yet. All Microsoft is saying is that it will be released in 2011.

As you know, Internet Explorer comes with Windows and is also an integral part of Windows.  You can’t uninstall it. But you don’t have to use it for surfing the web. In fact, we recommended that you don’t.  There are a lot of web browsers out there, most of them you’ve never heard of. The better known browsers are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Safari, and Opera.

Of these browsers, we recommend Google Chrome or Firefox. Why? Two main reasons. Speed and security. I won’t go into details here, but suffice it to say, Chrome and Firefox are not only faster than IE, they are more secure. A third, less important reason, is that there are lots of great plug-ins (also called extensions) for Chrome and Firefox. More for Firefox since it has been around a lot longer than Chrome. You would be amazed at some of the cool plug-ins you can get for them.

You don’t have to just choose one browser. In fact, you can have all of them installed if you want to. But only one can be your default. You may run into a web page from time to time that will only work with Internet Explorer, but that’s pretty rare.

If you would like to download and install Google Chrome, go to: www.google.com/chrome.

If you would like to download and install Firefox, go to: www.getfirefox.com.

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What to do when your internet stops working.

Here is a little troubleshooting guide for what to do if you can’t access the internet with your computer. You may want to keep this in case this happens to you.

If you have several computers and none of them can access the internet then the problem is either with your internet service, your cable/DSL modem, or your router. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Call your internet service provider. For most people around here, that’s Time Warner or AT&T. Your Internet service provider can check your connection and they can also remotely check your Cable/DSL modem.

2. If your Internet Service Provider says everything is fine, then the next step is to reboot your router. To do that, unplug the power to the router either from the back of the router (usually a round black plug) or from the wall. Wait 5 seconds and plug it back in. Then wait a few  minutes. Now reboot all of your computers  and try it again.

3. If that didn’t work, reboot your cable/DSL modem. Like the router, unplug the power, wait 5 seconds, then plug back in and wait a couple of minutes. Then try it.

4. If it still doesn’t work, try bypassing the router. To do that, connect one of your computers directly to the cable/DSL modem (you’ll have to use a wire. Can’t do this wirelessly). Restart the cable/DSL modem as described above and then reboot your computer and see if it works. If it does, then your router probably needs to be replaced. If it doesn’t work, it’s either a problem with your cable/DSL modem or with the internet service.

   If your provider is Time Warner, you can have them come out and replace the cable modem, or you can take your cable modem down to their office and swap it out. There is no charge for either service, but it’s often faster to take it down there yourself. Installing a new cable modem is easy. Just plug it in the same way the old one was, and wait 5-10 minutes for it to sync with Time Warner.

   If you provider is AT&T, then your best bet is to call us. AT&T does not provide free replacement of DSL modems because you own the modem. In addition, the installation of a DSL modem is more complex than a cable modem, so it would be best if you had us do it for you. We carry DSL modems with us.

5. If it’s still not working, give us a call.

If other computers in your home/business can access the internet, then, it’s a problem with that specific computer. This problem is a little more difficult to troubleshoot, but here are some things you can try:

1. The first thing you should try is rebooting that computer.

2. If your computer connects wirelessly:

3. Use the wireless utility on your computer to reconnect to your router.

4. Can other computers connect wirelessly to your router? If not, there may be a problem with the wireless functionality on  your router. Try rebooting the router by unplugging the power as described above and then try again.

5. If your computer is connected to the router with a wire, give us a call.

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We here at Computer Troubleshooters are always evaluating security software so that we can recommend the best protection to help prevent your computer from becoming infected. To that end, we are changing one of our recommendations.

Infections usually get onto your computer either from websites or from email. When you are using a search engine like Google or Yahoo, you are very likely to visit websites you have never been to before. How do you know if these websites are safe?

A fairly new type of security software integrates into your web browser and shows ratings of website as to whether or not they are safe to visit. And it can prevent you from going to an infected website. Surprisingly few security suites provide this type of functionality. The only ones we have found that include this are AVG and McAfee.

AVG’s version is called LinkScanner. It’s good, but not great. McAfee’s version is called SiteAdvisor. In our experience, SiteAdvisor does a better job than LinkScanner. However, we don’t recommend any other McAfee products, so don’t go out and get McAfee Internet Security. The good news is that there is a free version of SiteAdvisor that anyone can download and install.

In the past we have recommended SiteAdvisor as a free addition to make your computer more secure. But now we have found a product that we like even more. It’s called Web of Trust (WOT). There are two main reasons we like WOT better than SiteAdvisor. The most important reason is that it’s ratings seem to be better. Because of that, it seems to do a better job of keeping you from accidentally going to a website that might infect your computer. The second reason we like it better is that it’s less intrusive on your web browser. SiteAdvisor is a tool bar that takes up space in your browser. It also nags you sometimes. WOT doesn’t take up much space on your web browser and I’ve never seen it nag.

If you are using AVG, you can disable LinkScanner, and install WOT. If you are using Vipre, we recommend downloading and installing WOT.

If you use Internet Explorer, you can download WOT at http://www.mywot.com/en/download/ie

If you use FireFox, you can download WOT at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3456

If you use Google Chrome, you can download WOT at https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bhmmomiinigofkjcapegjjndpbikblnp

For more information, check out http://www.mywot.com

Like any security software, it’s not a 100% guarantee that your computer won’t become infected. But WOT provides very good protection.

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As technology advances, older technology is replaced by new technology. It’s the way of things. Before computers came along, if you wanted to write a letter,  you either had to had write it on paper, or use a typewriter.  When computers first came on the scene, you would write a letter on your computer, print it, and mail it through the US Mail. Then when the Internet became more accessible to most people, you quite printing it and mailing it and instead sent email. Then many people moved from email to instant messenger. As most people got faster internet service, you could then use programs like Skype to communicate with other people with voice and video on your computer right over the internet. Thanks to the Internet, stamp sales are way down.

This type of thing has happened over the years with technology. The horse and buggy was replaced by the car. The train was, for the most part, replaced by airplanes. The list is very long.

Let’s look more closely at the types of technology that the internet has replaced in the last ten years or so.

• Printed Reference Materials and those who sold them

  When you wanted information, you went to a printed encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus, or other similar reference material. While Dictionary’s and thesaurus don’t get out of date that fast, encyclopedias did. Often, the encyclopedia you were using was several years old meaning the information in it was outdated. You also had to contend with Encyclopedia salesmen coming to your door trying to sell you more up to date encyclopedias.

  When home computers started becoming popular, you could then purchase encyclopedia programs on CD that you could run on your computer. They were cheaper than the old printed encyclopedias and you didn’t have to contend with salesmen, but just like printed encyclopedias, the information in them was stale when you first got it and became outdated. Then came the world wide web. Now you can go to Google or Wikipedia or encyclopedia.com or any other of the many places to get the information you need. And that information is usually up to date.

  The Yellow Pages falls into this same category. It’s still around, but used much less than it used to be. At some point, it will go away.

• Faxing

  Fax machines used to be the best and quickest way to send a document. You could overnight them, but that was, and still is, expensive. When computers first started becoming popular, fax modems became a popular substitution for fax machines. But the technology was still limited because it still revolved around the idea of printed documents. Then as the faster internet speeds came, you could simply create a document on your computer, attach it to an email, and send it to someone.

  Fax machines are still around, but you are finding fewer and fewer of them as time goes by. One thing that has kept the fax machine around longer are multi-function printers that can fax in addition to print. But I suspect that in 10 years, fax machines will be very rare.

• Paper Checks

  Although paper checks are still used a lot, its declining fast. It seems strange for me to say this since most of our clients pay us by check. It’s going to be many years before checks are gone, but they are on their way out. You can pay your bills online. You can pay by credit card, of course. You can often set it up so that a vendor can simply take what you owe directly from your bank account.

• Printed Newspapers, Magazines, and Books

  Newspaper circulation is way down. So are magazine subscriptions. During the next 10-15 years, more and more newspapers and magazines will fold. With devices like Amazon’s Kindle, books will start to decline as well.

• Bulletin Boards

  When you hear the term bulletin board, you probably think of a cork board with papers pinned on it. But if you were into computers in the 80′s and early 90′s like I was, then you might think of a computer bulletin board. The Internet certainly hasn’t replaced the cork bulletin board, but it has totally killed the computer bulletin board.

  Back before the internet was available to the average person, we did have modems. If you could find the telephone number for a computer bulletin board, you could have your computer call it. Once you got on a bulletin board, you could upload or download software or read and post messages. The hard part was finding a bulletin board’s phone number.

  As the Internet became more popular, especially to those who worked at corporations, the bulletin board was replaced by Gopher. Gopher was basically a bulletin board on the internet. Think of it as a text only version of the world wide web. Gopher didn’t last long before the web came along. Computer Bulletin boards and Gopher were great in their day, but they were basically stepping stones to the internet and to the world wide web.

• Video/DVD rental

  This is another one that isn’t gone yet, but like several others on this list, it’s going fast. I’m sure you have probably head of NetFlix. It’s a company where you can get online, tell it what movies you would like to see, then they mail you the DVD. After you watch it, you mail it back and then they mail you the next one on your list.

  Have you ever wondered about its name?  The name NetFlix doesn’t sound like a good name for a company that mails DVD’s. That’s because mailing DVD’s is just a stepping stone to where things are going and the founders of NetFlix knew it. And it’s starting to happen. With NetFlix, you can now watch movies, online, on your computer. BlockBuster is offering similar services. You can also purchase devices that you hook up to your TV and to the internet. These devices allow you to watch NetFlix movies online right on your TV without a computer. And now they have Internet ready TV’s that have this built right into the TV.

  While we are on this subject, we might as well talk about cable and satellite TV. You can watch movies online, but can you watch cable TV online? Not really. A lot of companies are working towards that, but we have a long way to go. You can, however, watch a lot of TV shows online. But it’s after the fact, not live as they are being aired. I can picture a time, however, where there is very little airing of TV shows. Shows will be created and released on a certain date and a certain time. At that time, you can download or view them over the internet. There will always be some live programming for news and things like that, but they will be delivered over the internet for the most part.

This is just a very small fraction of this list, but you get the idea. Basically, the Internet is a way to communicate. I think some day, the vast majority of all communication will use the Internet. I think some day cell phones will just be internet devices and the wireless technology used for cell phones today will be history. But before that happens, the Internet has to grow up and beef up. But that’s a story for another day.

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Somehow the Christmas shopping season starts earlier and earlier every year. I saw several Christmas themed commercials on TV this year before Halloween. Each year, we send you information on safe online shopping. I’m also already seeing online advertisements and emails from online retailers with early black Friday sales. 

Shopping at your local store entails an element of is risk. Driving to the store is dangerous. There is the risk of being robbed in the parking lot and so forth. It’s not likely that any of these things will happen to you when shopping, but it is possible.  

Online shopping is generally safe, but like other types of shopping, it has an element of risk too. There isn’t much chance of physical harm coming to you when you shop online, but there is financial risk. However, if you know how to shop online, your risk goes way down and it’s actually safer to shop online than in person. 

The first thing to know is that you should never enter any identifying information or financial information on a web site unless that website is secure.  I’m not talking about the part of the website where you are looking at merchandise. I’m talking about the part where you check out and enter personal and financial information. That’s where it needs to be secure.

How do you tell if a website is secure? Each web browser has a different indicator, but the easiest way to tell on all of them is to look at the address for the website. When you get to the part where you have to enter personal or financial information, look up at the address of the website. Normally when a website is not secure, you will see something like http://www.amazon.com. When a website is secure, you will see https://www.amazon.com.

Did you catch the difference? Instead of http, a secure website’s address starts with https instead of just http. 

So anytime you are on a website and you are entering personal or financial information, glance up at the address bar and make sure it says https before the website address before you submit any information. This type of security encrypts the information between your computer and the online store so that nobody can intercept the information and read it. 

Once the information reaches the store, the security is up to that store. So make sure you purchase from an online store that is reputable. Sites like Bizrate.com, shopping.yahoo.com, and other similar sites will give you ratings of online retailers. 

When comparing the prices at online retailers, be sure to include tax and shipping charges in your comparison. Your pet rock may cost $20 at one store and $25 and a second store so you would think that it’s cheaper to purchase at the first store. But if the first store has to charge sales tax and charges $10 for shipping while the second store does not have to charge sales tax in Texas (or wherever you live) and has free shipping, it’s actually cheaper to purchase it at the second store even though the price of the product is higher. 

Here’s a special note about ebay. If you shop on ebay, make sure you check out the seller before you bid. In the item screen on ebay next to the seller’s ID, there is a number. The number is the number of transactions the seller has made. Look for sellers with a large number of transactions. Right under that there is line for feedback and it tells you the percentage of positive feedback. No large seller is going to have 100% positive feedback, but you want one that is 97% or higher in positive feedback. Sometimes I’ll go and read some of the negative feedback, just to see what type of things people are complaining about. 

Individuals selling something generally won’t have a large number of transactions. For those, you want 100% positive feedback. 

And don’t forget to place your online orders early so that you can get them before Christmas. Many online retailers offer free shipping. Remember that the closer you get to Christmas, the more you will have to pay for shipping to make sure you can get it by Christmas. 

You can order as late as the morning of the 23rd and use next day shipping and usually get it before Christmas day, but I don’t recommend waiting until the last minute if you can help it. Sometimes it takes an online store 24 hours to process your order before it is shipped so if you purchased on the 23rd, it might not get shipped until the 24th and next day shipping won’t help you there. 

Sometimes shipments get delayed. Shippers like UPS and Fedex can also temporarily loose or mis-route packages. I had a package being shipped to me via UPS Ground once. The truck was disabled someone. I don’t know if it broke down or was in an accident, but the packages had to be offloaded to another truck and my package was delayed by one day. 

By the way, the day after Thanksgiving, also known as black Friday, is also a great shopping day online. Check it out!

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A Domain Name Server (DNS) serves a very important role in on the internet. We humans prefer names over numbers. I know this because my name is Drew and not 48439834344. When it comes to computers, however, they prefer numbers.

Every computer on the internet has a numerical address called an IP address. An example of an IP address is 24.123.17.55. When you type in a website like www.google.com, that means something  to you, but in order for your computer to find www.google.com, it needs the numerical address. That’s where DNS comes in. A DNS is like a cross reference from the name of a website to its numerical address.

So, using our example above, when you type in www.google.com, your computer goes to your DNS and finds that the IP address for www.google.com is 208.69.36.231 and then uses that to contact www.google.com.

Your internet service provider assigns your computer an IP address and a DNS server. Sometimes, a faulty modem or router can prevent a DNS from being assigned to your computer. Your computer is on the internet, but you can’t do anything because you have no DNS server and so you can’t find any servers. That means you can’t access any websites. You can’t get your e-mail. You can’t instant message. You can’t do anything on the internet without DNS!

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What is computer networking? It’s basically connecting 2 or more computers together so that they can “talk” to each other. If you have more than one computer in your home or office, they are most likely networked together.

In the home, the most common way to create a network is with a router. Installing a wireless router in your home allows multiple computers to share the same internet connection and it adds wireless access. Any computer connected to that router, whether it’s connected with a wire or wirelessly, is on your network. Your home router creates your network.

In a business environment, and in some homes, a network is created with panels, switches, hubs, and so forth. But it’s the same concept. We are just hooking our computers together so they can share an internet connection. Networking computers together allows them to “talk” to each other so we can share files, share printers, play games together, send and receive e-mail, view web pages, and so forth.

The internet is a type of network. It’s basically a network of networks. When you sign up for internet service, you sign up with an internet service provider. That provider has a very large network of all of their customers. That internet service provider’s network is part of a larger internet service providers network. The large internet service providers have large networks of all of their customers, and their customer’s customers. They connect these large networks to each other and what you get is the Internet.

Because the Internet is a network of networks, the path a packet of information takes to go from one place to another may be different each time it travels. This is a good thing because if there is a problem on one network, there is another route your request can take to get where it’s going.

And you might be surprised to see the path your little packet of information takes to get where it’s going. Send an e-mail to your friend that lives 4 miles from your house, that e-mail could travel the world before ending up on your friend’s computer.

When you type in www.google.com in your web browser, a packet of information is sent out to the server that hosts www.google.com. Because the internet is a network of networks, this packet of information travels from server to server to server until it reaches the server that hosts www.google.com. Each time a packet travels from one server to another, that’s called a hop.

How many hops does it take for a network packet to get from your computer to www.google.com? It depends. It depends on who your internet service provider is. It also depends on how busy each internet server is. There is a command you can run on your computer that will show you all of the hops an internet packet takes to get from your computer to another computer on the internet. When I run this command on my computer to www.google.com, it takes 14 hops to get to www.google.com. Are you surprised at how many hops there were?

Try it on your computer. Here’s how.

If you have Windows XP

1.       Click on Start and then click on run

2.       Type cmd and click ok

3.       Type tracert www.google.com

4.       Hit enter on your keyboard and watch it list each hop.

5.       Try this with other server names.

6.       When you are done, type exit and hit enter.

If you have Windows Vista

1.       Click on the button formally known as Start

2.       Type cmd and hit enter on your keyboard

3.       Type: tracert www.google.com

4.       Hit enter on your keyboard and watch it list each hop.

5.       Try this with other server names.

6.       When you are done, type exit and hit enter.

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