Anatomy of a page request
What happens when this page loads, measured on your own visit.
Address
At first your device only knows the name stehl.ing. A DNS resolver, usually your internet provider's, translates it into the server's IP address. The answer is cached, so the next visit skips this step.
- Lookup time
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- Server IP address
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Connection
Your device opens a TCP connection to the server. Both sides then agree on a key via TLS; from here on everything is encrypted, which is what the https in the address bar stands for. Only then is the page requested and transferred.
- Protocol
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Server
The request reaches a server at Hetzner. Traefik accepts it, decrypts it and passes it on to a Docker container, where the Caddy web server delivers the page. Along the way the server sees which IP address the request came from.
- Server
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- Server response time
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- Your IP address
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- Your network operator
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Way back
The response travels in packets through a series of routers to you. Traceroute makes these routers visible: it sends packets with a limited lifetime (TTL). Each router subtracts one; when it reaches zero, the router drops the packet and reports back to the sender. With TTL 1, 2, 3 … one router after another answers.
This measures from the server to you, i.e. the way back. The way there may use different routers, as internet routing is often asymmetric.