A traceroute is a valuable network tool for providing the route taken by packets across the Internet. In plain english, a traceroute maps out the network path from your computer to a server you are connecting to, whether it is your favourite website, an email server, an FTP server, or a gaming partner's computer. Traceroutes are most useful for troubleshooting connectivity issues. Unusally high hop times or packet loss are indicators of network performance issues. For a more detailed explanation of traceroutes, click here.

Please note that network firewalls can cause timeouts. If the server you are tracing to has an aggressive firewall, you may see timeouts (indicated by an asterisk *) on the final hops.

Windows Vista / Windows 7: Click on the Windows start menu and type "cmd" into the "Search programs and files" field. Hit enter on your keyboard to run the program.

Windows XP:

Step 1: Click on Start, select Run,
Step 2: Type "cmd" in the "Open:" field and click OK.

Type "tracert domain" where domain is the network address, then hit enter. In the example above, the traceroute will be going to mail.hover.com.

Completed traceroute.

Open your Macintosh HD.

Under Places, select Applications. Open the Utilities folder, then double click on Network Utility.

Select the Traceroute tab, enter the network address, or domain, to trace your Internet route to, then click on the Trace button.

The screenshot above shows a traceroute to mail.hover.com which took three hops to complete (from most external connections you will see a dozen hops or more before reaching our mail server).

Open the Terminal from your Applications menu. In the Gnome desktop environment you should find the Terminal in System Tools.

Type "traceroute domain" where domain is the network address, then hit enter. In the example above, the traceroute will be going to mail.hover.com.

Completed traceroute.
__________________________________________________________

Join us on Facebook: http://about.hover.com/facebook

__________________________________________________________

Article Shortcut: http://about.hover.com/traceroute

__________________________________________________________