Ping, Traceroute and Trinity’s Leather Clad Butt

Over dinner one night, I tried to explain ping, traceroute and portscan to my wife.   This is what came from that conversation.   This is *her* interpretation and yes, I married her.  You can’t have her.*

(A guest post by my lovely wife: Wendi)

I am now going to horrify every honest to god computer geek I have that reads this.

…that, or you’re going to die laughing. At me, or with me, it’s all good.

I asked Scott about “tracert” and “ping” and “ports”; he tried to explain that. Unfortunately, my brain works best with some very visual metaphors. So this is what I came away from that conversation with, presented here for your amusement.

“Ping” is a chore. This chore is performed by Bit (the little Yes/No guy from the original Tron). You tell Bit to… say… drive to DismalLand, find out why the fuck the lines are so long, and come back. When Bit comes back and says”Because it’s DismalLand, the Tragic Kingdom, dummy. The lines are always long!” the Ping chore is complete.

Now, there are a lot of hazards between you and DismalLand. Some of it is bad road, some of it is bad drivers, some of it is that incredibly STUPID civil engineer who designed the fucking roads. I like to think that some of those hazards might include Jack Sparrow driving a parade float pirate ship, and he’s being chased by a other pirates – either the kinds with swords in their teeth, or the kinds who are busily downloading cars and purses and stuff off the intarwebs. And then there’s DHS, who are kind of like the Keystone Cops but with more guns and stuff.So to navigate all those things, Bit turns into Trinity from the Matrix. Probably on a motorcycle. I picked her because her leatherclad ass is amazing. Plus, she has guns and kung fu, and that picture is a lot more interesting.

Now, maybe you don’t trust Bit. Maybe Bit ran off with your best friend like a two dollar whore this onetime. Maybe Bit is a pathological liar. Maybe Bit is the Godspouse of Tinkerbell and easily distracted. Who knows? But you think Bit is really damn flaky. So you hire some guy named TraceRoute.

TraceRoute’s job is to follow Bit around EVERYWHERE AND REPORT EVERYTHING. “Bit’s left turn signal came on at 10:15:00. Bit merged into the left lane at 10:15:20. Bit took her hands off the handlebars and blew the living shit out of Jack Sparrow’s parade float at 10:16:31.” So when Bit comes back, Bit comes back with an attitude and a ream of paper that details every time she did anything, ever.

So then you ask about the “ports”. Ports are basically like doors.

I’m going to massively change metaphors here.

Say you’re in a whorehouse. There are many doors. And behind each door is a different thing. Blowjobs behind this door, handjobs behind that door, goatse behind the other door, and thank all the gods of network traffic that the Etsy Cupcake Circle Jerk door is always locked. Naturally, all these doors are closed. Some of them are locked all the time, some are unlocked all the time, some are only locked when something fun is happening, and sometimes some asshole with a master key runs through and just randomly locks and unlocks shit to piss you off.

You can make Bit go check this for you,too. That way, YOU don’t have to suffer surprise goatse. Bit deserves it, the bitch. There’s about three different ways this can happen,but they’re all called PortScan.

There’s a doorman/bouncer at all those ports.

This bouncer is called…

WAIT FOR IIIIIIIIIT!

A DAEMON (This part is an inside joke to a particular forum. Don’t worry about it if you don’t get why that is side splittingly funny)

*You can’t have her unless you ask her nicely.