[packetslave]

To be fair, that entire traceroute never touches "the Internet". Everything after hop 6 is inside Google's backbone network, and everything before hop 7 is inside Linode/Akamai.

[alexchamberlain]

So it hits the Internet once between Akamai and Google I guess?

[packetslave]

I mean, KIND OF, if you squint. From the trace, Akamai and Google have a direct peering link (hop 6 looks like an Akamai edge/peering router -- Akamai owns Linode so that makes sense -- and hop 7 is a Google peering router).

For it to be hitting "the Internet" you'd expect to see hops on a Tier 1 carrier like AT&T, Lumen, etc. and/or an ISP like Comcast, Spectrum, etc.

[Hikikomori]

It's still the internet, tier 1 carriers aren't special, they're just big.