What is a hit? A "hit" means a single request from a web browser for a single item from a web server; thus in order for a web browser to display a page that contains 3 graphics, 4 "hits" would occur at the server: 1 for the HTML page, and one for each of the 3 graphics. .hits. are often used as a very rough measure of load on a server, e.g. "Our server has been getting 300,000 hits per month." Because each "hit" can represent anything from a request for a tiny document (or even a request for a missing document) all the way to a request that requires some significant extra processing (such as a complex search request), the actual load on a machine from 1 hit is almost impossible to define.
What is a Hit?
What is a Unique Host? A host has a specific "local or host number" that, together with the network number, forms its unique IP address. If you use Point-to-Point Protocol to get access to your access provider, you have a unique IP address for the duration of any connection you make to the Internet and your computer is a host for that period.
What is traceroute? Traceroute is a utility that records the route (the specific gateway computers at each hop) through the Internet between your computer and a specified destination computer. It also calculates and displays the amount of time each hop took. Traceroute is a handy tool both for understanding where problems are in the Internet network and for getting a detailed sense of the Internet itself. Another utility, Packet Internet or Inter-Network Groper, is often used prior to using traceroute to see whether a host is present on the network. The traceroute utility comes included with a number of operating systems, including Windows 95/98/NT and UNIX-based operating systems (such as IBM's AIX/6000) or as part of a TCP/IP package. If your system doesn't include the utility, you can install it. There are freeware versions that you can download.
Here is an example of traceroute output In Windows, the hop times are shown before the gateway computer address.
How It Works
When you enter the traceroute command, the utility initiates the sending of a packet (using the Internet Control Message Protocol or ICMP), including in the packet a time limit value (known as the TTL, or "time to live") that is designed to be exceeded by the first router that receives it, which will return a Time Exceeded message. This enables traceroute to determine the time required for the hop to the first router. Increasing the time limit value, it resends the packet so that it will reach the second router in the path to the destination, which returns another Time Exceeded message, and so forth. Traceroute determines when the packet has reached the destination by including a port number that is outside the normal range. When it's received, a Port Unreachable message is returned, enabling traceroute to measure the time length of the final hop. As the tracerouting progresses, the records are displayed for you hop by hop. Actually, each hop is measured three times. (If you see an asterisk (*), this indicates a hop that exceeded some limit.)
If you have a Windows 95, 98, or NT operating system, try traceroute out by clicking on Start-->Programs-->MS-DOS Prompt, and then at the C:WINDOWS prompt, enter:
tracert www.webstorage.com
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