What is a Traceroute?
Whether you are having trouble connecting to your website or you are experiencing slow network performance, our tech support team may ask you to perform a “traceroute” to make sure there isn’t a connectivity problem between your internet service provider and our server. A traceroute shows the route you taking with a specific ISP at that instant, over the Internet to reach your server. This information can help us diagnose a possible network issue.
How to Perform a Traceroute in Windows
Windows 7 and older
- Click on the “Start” menu and type “cmd” into the search field (where it says “Search programs and files” or “Start search”).
- Push the Enter key on your keyboard. A DOS prompt window will open up.
- Type the following command in the command window and press ‘Enter’:
tracert -d yourdomain.tld
(remember to replace yourdomain.tld with your actual domain name)
Make sure to let the traceroute task finish completely; it can sometimes take several minutes.
Windows 8.x and newer
- Use the search window, type command prompt and click on the Command Prompt result.
- Type the following command in the command window and press ‘Enter’:
tracert -d yourdomain.tld
(remember to replace yourdomain.tld with your actual domain name)
Make sure to let the traceroute task finish completely; it can sometimes take several minutes.
- You can copy and paste the traceroute results into an email by selecting the upper-left hand icon and selecting “Edit -> Mark”
- You can now “select” the text of the window using your mouse cursor. Select the text of the results and hit “enter”. This will put the text on the clipboard. You can then use your keyboard and press Control + V to paste the information your e-mail client or in a Client Area ticket reply.
How to Perform a Traceroute in MAC OS
- Open up the Terminal by using Command + Space and type ‘Terminal’
- In the new terminal window, type the following command and press ‘Enter’
traceroute -n yourdomain.tld
(
remember to replace yourdomain.tld with your actual domain name).
Make sure to let the traceroute finish completely; it can sometimes take several minutes.
You should see similar information to the following when it finishes:
MacBook-Pro:~ $ traceroute to linuxhostingserver.com (23.158.72.73), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 3.511 ms 3.024 ms 3.108 ms
2 * * *
3 49.207.47.217 4.500 ms 3.973 ms 3.886 ms
4 14.143.30.97 5.769 ms 4.442 ms 4.258 ms
5 172.29.251.34 40.516 ms 39.708 ms 40.053 ms
6 180.87.37.1 38.277 ms 41.240 ms 38.220 ms
7 180.87.36.5 266.903 ms 266.864 ms 272.075 ms
8 180.87.36.139 271.156 ms 275.408 ms 285.534 ms
9 180.87.36.83 291.401 ms 383.237 ms 348.720 ms
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
14 * * *
15 * * *
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * * * 19 * * * 20 * * * 21 * * * 22 * * * 23 * * * 24 * * * 25 * * * 26 * * * 27 * * * 28 * * * 29 * * * 30 * * * MacBook-Pro:~ $
How to Perform a Traceroute in Linux
- Open a Terminal window using Ctrl + Alt + T. Simply hold all three keys at the same time, and a terminal window will open.
- In the new terminal window, type the following command and press ‘Enter’
traceroute -I yourdomain.tld
(remember to replace yourdomain.tld with your actual domain name).
Make sure to let the traceroute finish completely; it can sometimes take several minutes.
We hope this article has made this topic clearer and if you still have a question or need help, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our support team!