Hi all.

I was looking around for a web host and came across sites stating they are 1 hop from the internet backbone. What is meant by this? Could I check the number of hops by using traceroute?

Below is a sample of traceroute result for visuallink.com. So how many hops are there?

1 206.117.161.1 (206.117.161.1) 0.654 ms 0.861 ms
2 isi-acg.ln.net (130.152.136.1) 4.791 ms 3.733 ms
3 s4-1-1.lsanca1-cr3.bbnplanet.net (4.24.40.13) 4.399 ms 5.483 ms
4 p2-0.lsanca1-ba1.bbnplanet.net (4.24.4.17) 3.653 ms 4.959 ms
5 p0-0-0.lsanca1-bp1.bbnplanet.net (4.24.5.178) 7.361 ms 3.632 ms
6 core4-hssi0-0-0.Bloomington.cw.net (204.70.10.233) 6.515 ms 5.211 ms
7 corerouter1.Bloomington.cw.net (204.70.9.147) 6.072 ms 6.242 ms
8 xcore1.Washington.cw.net (204.70.150.97) 82.064 ms 81.481 ms
9 visual-link.Washington.cw.net (204.70.76.14) 104.318 ms 87.208 ms
10 ns.visuallink.com (206.151.68.1) 93.011 ms 214.512 ms

Thanks in advance.

>>8 xcore1.Washington.cw.<<

This is Cable & Wireless's Washington, D.C. router center. Cable & Wireless is a major world-wide backbone provider.

>>9 visual-link.Washington.cw.net<<

This appears to be visuallink's core router (the router, located in C&W's facility, that visuallink's line is plugged into)

>>10 ns.visuallink.com <<

This is visuallink.

So yes - this web host appears to be one hop off of the C&W backbone. They apparently buy their connectivity from C&W.