Tracert and Number of Hops

Request timed out just means a response was not received. That doesn't mean anything is wrong. A device can be up and running perfectly, but simply configured not to respond to ICMP.

Also, the ICMP packets that are sent for pings and traceroutes are very small. The amount of time it takes to go from point a to point b is not related to whether you have cable, or what the bandwidth is. Having broadband affects how much you can move at one time, not the speed at which it moves.

Think of it this way: Dial-up like putting your data in the trunk of a Kia. DSL is like putting your data in the back of a station wagon. Cable is like putting your data in the back of a pick-up truck. If you're sending a lot of data, that pick-up truck comes in handy. But if you're sending a single number 10 envelope (your ICMP packet), the capacity of the vehicle is not an important factor. The size of the driver's bladder is more relevant.

Yes. That's absolutely normal.

A dynamic IP address simply means that your IP address will only change when the network has a need to assign you a different IP address. Until then, you will continue to have the same IP address, even if you turn off your equipment. But *you* can't count on when that need comes, and when the time comes, by using DHCP, you don't have to do anything when your IP changes.

I don't see a problem with what you posted. If you are having a problem, this doesn't show it.

Lol, I like that analogy but also, the pick-up truck goes faster than the station wagon, and the station wagon faster than the kia. However, as you said, the driver of the pick-up may be having some bladder control issues.

. . . so, in a gaming situation, the player might hit the command 'shoot' but the driver is still flushing the urinal . . .

-g

No. Electrons travel down copper, and light through fiber at the same speed whatever that copper or fiber is connected to. They don't magically go faster because they originated or are destined for a cable subscriber. Cable networks didn't change the laws of physics.

The driver of the pick-up may need to relieve his bladder as well. There probably is a greater tendency for dial-up to have more latency because of the way the client modem is connected to the modem rack at the ISP, but if you have a low enough latency on that first hop, dial-up should be able to send a shoot command as quickly as someone on an over-subscribed cable network, or on DSL at the maximum distance from the CO (or if the DSLAM is oversubscribed). (Unless the game designer has decided that a lot more information needs to be up and downloaded, instead of being on the client machine already.)

Then if comparing it to a highway, a modem would be like a highway with 1 lane in each direction whereas a cable modem would be like a highway with 8 lanes in each direction. However, no car is allowed to go over 60 mph.

-g

More or less. But not quite. Different devices, such as modems, hubs, switches, bridges and routers, are more like toll booths and inspection stations. The variables include how long it takes for the device to do what it needs to do, how big of a queuing-up area there is, and how many loads are being sent to that device.

Cars, trucks, and even mopeds will all travel at the same speed over the physical medium. Anytime vehicles come to a device whether it is the modem on your desk or some backbone router there will be a bottleneck. On the backbone, traffic can be routed around some bottlenecks. (Sometimes this happens easily and automatically. Sometimes, such as in a network interchange point with a peering agreement between the networks, it needs to be done manually, and possibly only after some suit makes a deal.) But the biggest bottlenecks are usually those closest to each end point, such as the modem sitting on your desk. Those bottlenecks can't be routed around.

Servers also aren't just pushing as much as they can as soon as you ask for data. In TCP there are transmission control messages going back to the source that (in the context of our shipping vehicle analogy) tell the sender that they can dispatch another load. It can be a problem if your computer is sending out messages saying that it can handle bigger loads than it really can. If the queue leading to the bottleneck fills, the drivers get frustrated, and self-district themselves and their loads.

And to carry the analogy even further, the real data in the loads are in boxes within boxes within boxes. At some of the stops along the way, inspection agents have to open some of the outer boxes, and then repack them. That takes time, too. But whatever vehicle they put the load on as they send it out, once that vehicle hits the physical medium, be it copper or fiber, it will travel at the exact same speed as every other vehicle on that packet.