Trace route 2nd device location

With FTTC, when I enter a tracert command on my PC, the first hop is my local router, but where is the 2nd hop device? If I don't change ISP and the ISP does not change their network is the device likely to change?

2nd device can be anywhere, since your data is in a tunnel.

Specifics are needed to say much.

The 2nd node on a tracert is the Internet Gateway. It is often displayed in the router. With a BT-based connection it will be a BT node, typically 213.1.112.xxx.

For a particular end user, would I be right to think that this would only change if the ISP re-organizes their network?

Or they have multiple gateways into their network and which you end up on is allocated on a dynamic basis

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

For a particular end user, would I be right to think that this would only change if the ISP re-organizes their network?

As MrSaffron says, if you start a new PPP session then your gateway almost tends to alter. You don't need to re-sync, if you have the facility on your router to drop sessions.

On Plusnet this was something many of us used to do on ADSL2+ after initial sync, if we found we were on one of their poorly-performing gateways. They were introducing higher-capacity ones and they were lousy. We all tried to drop sessions until we were lucky enough to get an older one.

I just was wondering if with Vodafone there was a sure way of telling whether users poor performance was due to the gateway or the pipe to it.

As I see it, the ping reply from a gateway, (which is all a tracert gives - it just pings each step in turn a few times to cater for short fluctuations, then pings the next one), can vary either because of congestion in the backhaul from the exchange (almost certainly not between the user and the exchange), or because the gateway itself is treating pings as very low priority when it is under load. As do many home and network routers.

As a rule of thumb, if a step gives a slow response, but the ones following it are lower, that isn't a problem in real usage. It just means this is happening but the packets for later are getting through quickly.

If however that slow response is followed by the later steps being a bit higher but not a lot, that suggests a data bottleneck at that slow-responding router. If another jump occurs in a later one, the same applies.

With Step 2, the first we see after our router, we have no way of knowing.