Traceroute
The traceroute command identifies each stop IP packets take on the way from your computer to another website or server. Performing a traceroute command can be useful for determining if network issues are causing connection problems for you as you can see exactly where the IP packet stopped.
Steps
Windows Steps
- Click Start.
- Click Run. From here a box will open.
- Type "cmd" without quotes in the box to open the command prompt.
- Type in "tracert example.com" without quotes, replacing example.com with whatever server or website you are tracing to.
You will see each transfer though other computers on a network, or HOPs the IP packet takes along the path to the site/server. On each line there will be three durations (in milliseconds) to each hop along with the domain name of that device and its IP address.
The more HOPs there are, the more routers the packet traveled through. You will see something like:
28 ms 41 ms 33 ms www.firstdevicedomain.com [192.168.0.1]
2 48 ms 41 ms 49 ms www.seconddevicedomain.com [16.70.15.99]]
3 92 ms 99 ms 98 ms www.thirddevicedomain.com [53.11.75.99]
4 122 ms 141 ms 137 ms www.domain.com [46.44.5.122]- Typically, a router configuration problem or bad IP address will read something like this on the first HOP line: "157.54.48.1 reports: Destination net unreachable."
Mac OS X steps
- Open Utilities. This can be found on the desktop header, under the "Go" drop menu. You can also access it by using the keyboard shortcut Up, Command and U.
- Open up the Terminal (also known as the command line.)
- Type "traceroute wikihow.com"
- Read the results of the traceroute. If the IP packet did not complete its path, you will see a notation as to why, such as "Host is down" or "Source Route Failed." The former indicates the server is down, the latter that your router may be configured to block source-routed packets.
Linux Steps
- If you run Linux, open your favorite terminal (RXVT, gnome-terminal, kterm)
- Type "traceroute wikihow.com"
- Check for any "*" in the output, which mean the required field cannot be fetched. There are numerous reasons for this, from IP packets not reaching the target router to DNS lookup failure.
Tips
- If you want to see a traceroute from another server, there are many web sites like http://www.newhousenetwork.net/route-trace.php that will allow you to perform this task.
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