Traceroute

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Traceroute is a command-line tool that can be used to identify all of the routing hops between two hosts by intentionally exceeding response time from every gateway to a destination. It's usefulness is shown when you need to find an intermediate server for information gathering, or for checking where in a network a site is failing or bottlenecking.

Performing a Traceroute

To perform from windows: from a command prompt type

C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe

C:\WINDOWS\> tracert domain.com

To perform in a Linux/Unix Terminal type

Terminal

localhost:~ $ traceroute domain.com

Example of Tracert

C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe

C:\WINDOWS\> tracert google.com Tracing route to google.com [74.125.237.9] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 6 ms 4 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1 2 49 ms 33 ms 40 ms 123.123.123.123 3 84 ms 173 ms 107 ms 172.11.11.11 4 43 ms 84 ms 57 ms 172.22.22.22 5 * 70 ms 136 ms 110.110.110.110 6 86 ms 31 ms 33 ms 203.203.11.11 7 170 ms * 83 ms 203.203.22.22 8 117 ms 68 ms 88 ms 74.125.50.1 9 109 ms 69 ms 73 ms 66.249.50.1 10 85 ms 73 ms 152 ms 72.14.237.47 11 * 123 ms 107 ms 74.125.237.9 Trace complete.

This example shows 3 trace packets being sent, resulting in 3 columns of time between each hop. When the trace fails to reach its destination or expires, an asterisk appears in the appropriate column. Also note that in this example, there are 11 hops with the first being the router and the last being the destination (google.com).

Options for Tracert

• -d
  • Do not resolve addresses of router interfaces to host names.

     E.g: wwwcomcast-vip.westchester.pa.bo.comcast.net [69.241.45.4] becomes 69.241.45.4.

• -h < maximum_hops >
  • Limits number of hops to get to the specified domain.
• -j < host_list >
  • Loose source routing along the host-list (IPV4-only).
• -w < timeout >
  • Wait timeout milliseconds for each reply.
• -R
  • Trace round-trip path (IPV6-only).
• -S < srcaddr >
  • Source address to use (IPV6-only).
• -4
  • Force IPV4
• -6
  • Force IPV6

Example of Traceroute

Terminal

localhost:~ $ traceroute yahoo.com traceroute to www.yahoo.com (69.147.114.210), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1 10.2.71.1 (10.2.71.1) 21.965 ms 22.035 ms 22.111 ms 2 (ISP) (ISP gateway) 22.510 ms 25.716 ms 26.073 ms 3 61.246.224.209 (61.246.224.209) 69.212 ms 59.778 ms 63.334 ms 4 59.145.6.1 (59.145.6.1) 65.632 ms 64.750 ms 64.868 ms 5 59.145.11.69 (59.145.11.69) 63.562 ms 64.219 ms 63.742 ms 6 203.208.143.241 (203.208.143.241) 318.632 ms 307.733 ms 316.650 ms 7 203.208.149.25 (203.208.149.25) 317.534 ms 308.116 ms 307.507 ms 8 203.208.186.10 (203.208.186.10) 245.835 ms 247.878 ms 248.862 ms 9 so-1-1-0.pat1.dce.yahoo.com (216.115.101.129) 286.774 ms 289.702 ms so-1-1-0.pat2.dce.yahoo.com (216.115.101.131) 326.470 ms 10 ge-2-1-0-p141.msr1.re1.yahoo.com (216.115.108.19) 324.044 ms 324.497 ms 326.011 ms 11 ge-1-32.bas-a1.re3.yahoo.com (66.196.112.35) 333.479 ms 333.019 ms ge-1-41.bas-a2.re3.yahoo.com (66.196.112.201) 292.967 ms 12 * * * 13 * * * 14 * * * 15 * * *