Trace Your Network and Internet Data Path with Traceroute (tracert)

Trace Your Network and Internet Data Path with Traceroute (tracert)


Frequently, you have a connection problem over your network or the Internet not because your final destination is down, but because there's a problem with a router somewhere between you and your final destination. For troubleshooting those kinds of problems, use tracert. It displays the path that data takes en route to the server or service that you're trying to reach, either on your network or across the Internet. As with ping, it does this by sending ICMP Echo Request messages to the destination you're checking on. To use it, first open a command prompt

Opening a Command Prompt in Windows

type tracert destination, where destination can be either an IP address or a hostname. Following is a typical response from a tracert command:




If the destination can't be reached, you will get the message "Destination unreachable" or "Request timed out."


As you can see, tracert shows the IP address and hostname address of each hop, along with timing data for each hop. If you're having problems on your network, this can help you locate the source of the problem; if a hop has a particularly long delay, you know that's the cause.

You can use several switches with tracert, like this:


Tracert -d -h 45 zdnet.com


This command traces to zdnet.com, displaying only the IP addresses of each router and specifying a maximum number of 45 hops en route to the destination. The table below shows the most useful tracert switches.


Table: Useful tracert switches

Switch

What it does

-d

Does not display the hostname of each router.

-h value

Sets a maximum number of hops for the trace to the destination.

-w value

Sets the maximum amount of time in milliseconds to wait for a reply.



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