This article describes TRACERT (Trace Route), a command-line utility that you can use to trace the path that an Internet Protocol (IP) packet takes to its destination.
The TRACERT diagnostic utility determines the route to a destination by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo packets to the destination. In these packets, TRACERT uses varying IP Time-To-Live (TTL) values. Because each router along the path is required to decrement the packet's TTL by at least 1 before forwarding the packet, the TTL is effectively a hop counter. When the TTL on a packet reaches zero (0), the router sends an ICMP "Time Exceeded" message back to the source computer.
TRACERT sends the first echo packet with a TTL of 1 and increments the TTL by 1 on each subsequent transmission, until the destination responds or until the maximum TTL is reached. The ICMP "Time Exceeded" messages that intermediate routers send back show the route. Note however that some routers silently drop packets that have expired TTLs, and these packets are invisible to TRACERT.
TRACERT prints out an ordered list of the intermediate routers that return ICMP "Time Exceeded" messages. Using the -d option with the tracert command instructs TRACERT not to perform a DNS lookup on each IP address, so that TRACERT reports the IP address of the near-side interface of the routers
The time it takes for this process to complete helps determine two things:
- Does the destination machine respond?
- How long does it take the destination machine to respond back?
To run this tool is very simple.
For windows you simply open a command prompt:
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Goto Start -> run -> typeCMD ->press enter
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Within the command prompt you will type:
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tracert destination-IP
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For example:
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tracert 11.1.0.1
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Output:
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Tracing route to 11.1.0.1 over a maximum of 30 hops |
