traceroute output analysis linux - router ip address

Question

I am interested in knowing the network topology. Specifically I wanted to know the ip address of the router as the 'outer world' sees it and NOT 192.168.1.1, for that I used the traceroute command which gave the following output:

..~\ $ traceroute www.google.com
traceroute to www.google.com (74.125.236.148), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1  172.16.0.1 (172.16.0.1)  4.130 ms  21.449 ms  36.993 ms
2  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  46.944 ms  51.243 ms  68.279 ms
3  ras.beamtele.net (49.206.128.1)  87.065 ms  87.423 ms  87.982 ms
4  ras.beamtele.net (183.82.14.41)  88.742 ms  88.949 ms  90.708 ms
5  121.240.252.5.STATIC-Hyderabad.vsnl.net.in (121.240.252.5)  91.331 ms  91.590 ms    115.113.207.53.static-hyderabad.vsnl.net.in (115.113.207.53)  91.896 ms
6  172.31.16.197 (172.31.16.197)  142.291 ms  85.328 ms  19.992 ms
7  115.113.165.98.static-mumbai.vsnl.net.in (115.113.165.98)  21.951 ms  23.432 ms  24.055 ms
8  72.14.232.202 (72.14.232.202)  25.678 ms * *
9  216.239.48.179 (216.239.48.179)  25.949 ms  44.853 ms  47.146 ms
10  bom03s02-in-f20.1e100.net (74.125.236.148)  68.244 ms  68.474 ms  68.842 ms

My IP in the WLAN is 172.16.0.9 (found using ifconfig). I suppose 49.206.128.1 is the gateway. When I use net services like "http://whatismyipaddress.com" I get 49.206.128.1 which is the third hop.

All the other IP addresses in the LAN are like 172.16.0.xxx (perhaps one of those reserved series of IPs).

Please explain what the first and second hops are actually. Can someone (not within the LAN) contact the router as those in the LAN do using 192.168.1.1?

(I am a newbie in this field so please ignore any misconceptions)

Answer 1

The typical case when using NAT (that is: having a network with private IP range connected to the internet) all machines inside the internal net share the same public IP address (or set of addresses).

so 49.206.128.1 is the public address of the router and all the other machines inside the network.