I hope that my packets aren’t going to Los Angeles and Texas to get from my house in Champaign back to campus, but if the router labels below are accurate…
C:>tracert www.uiuc.edu Tracing route to swan28.admin.uiuc.edu [128.174.254.28] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms gateway.private.betka.net [192.168.1.1] 2 * * * Request timed out. 3 113 ms 10 ms 12 ms ge-1-4-ur01.champaign.il.chicago.comcast.net [68.85.178.81] 4 19 ms 19 ms 20 ms pos-0-11-0-0-ar01.indianapolis.in.indiana.comcast.net [68.86.90.170] 5 42 ms 53 ms 45 ms pos-0-1-0-0-cr01.nashville.tn.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.169] 6 57 ms 45 ms 56 ms pos-1-8-0-0-cr01.dallas.tx.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.17] 7 176 ms 101 ms 102 ms pos-0-15-0-0-cr01.losangeles.ca.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.85.137] 8 95 ms 130 ms 101 ms 68.86.89.158 9 175 ms 100 ms 102 ms vl3493.mpd01.lax01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.6.229] 10 130 ms 102 ms 102 ms te4-2.ccr01.sna02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.3.37] 11 117 ms 101 ms 102 ms te4-2.ccr01.san01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.126] 12 120 ms 101 ms 102 ms te4-2.ccr01.phx02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.7.85] 13 123 ms 204 ms 111 ms te4-2.ccr01.aus01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.1.165] 14 135 ms 103 ms 203 ms te8-2.mpd01.iah01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.1.66] 15 123 ms 175 ms 130 ms te3-4.mpd01.dfw01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.93] 16 152 ms 203 ms 124 ms te4-3.mpd01.mci01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.5.158] 17 155 ms 123 ms 146 ms te9-3.mpd01.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.25.82] 18 166 ms 123 ms 183 ms vl3605.na31.b002329-4.ord01.atlas.cogentco.com [38.20.36.178] 19 92 ms 128 ms 177 ms university-of-illinios-urbana.demarc.cogentco.com [38.104.99.42] 20 99 ms 98 ms 102 ms t-ur2rtr.ix.ui-iccn.org [72.36.126.101] 21 91 ms 98 ms 112 ms iccn-ur2rtr-uiuc2.gw.uiuc.edu [72.36.127.6] 22 132 ms 102 ms 101 ms t-exiteb.gw.uiuc.edu [130.126.0.73]
I’m told that’s standard these days. I was shown a Champaign -> Chicago -> South Bend -> New York City -> Chicago -> Atlanta -> Boston -> New York City -> Indianapolis -> Chicago -> Champaign route a few weeks ago (I think that was all of them).
For comparison, this is what the same route looks like from AT&T DSL:
traceroute to http://www.uiuc.edu (128.174.254.28), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 dmz.ckuehn.net (68.77.126.254) 0.359 ms 0.344 ms 0.432 ms
2 adsl-68-77-127-254.dsl.chmpil.ameritech.net (68.77.127.254) 8.572 ms 10.257 ms 11.706 ms
3 dist1-vlan60.chmpil.ameritech.net (67.36.90.242) 13.395 ms 15.113 ms 16.469 ms
4 bb1-g1-0.chmpil.ameritech.net (67.36.90.99) 18.166 ms 19.601 ms 21.529 ms
5 ded2-p4-0.chmpil.sbcglobal.net (151.164.92.185) 22.978 ms 24.650 ms 27.326 ms
6 University-of-Illinois-1157363.cust-rtr.ameritech.net (67.36.91.10) 28.036 ms 6.519 ms 8.163 ms
7 t-ur2rtr.ix.ui-iccn.org (72.36.126.66) 9.609 ms 6.305 ms 7.693 ms
8 iccn-ur2rtr-uiuc2.gw.uiuc.edu (72.36.127.6) 9.881 ms 11.079 ms 12.550 ms
9 t-exiteb.gw.uiuc.edu (130.126.0.73) 14.218 ms 15.911 ms 17.605 ms
I glossed over the airport codes the first time I read through that and missed a good chunk. If you were driving your packet around, this is what it’d look like.