Run a trace route on your PC

This article is about running a Trace Route, which helps us to identify where a connection issue might be.

You should know

Trace route is a command/process so you can see what path a data takes to get to its destination and how much latency, or delay, between each stage. A server that is causing problems in the connection (it's either offline or very slow) will show up with (*) asterisks rather than trace times in ms.

Steps

Windows

  1. To open the Command Prompt; Open the Run window (Windows + R)
  2. Type cmd and hit enter, or press ok
  3. In Command Prompt, type tracert -4 [domain.name] (e.g. tracert -4 one.nz)

MAC

  1. Open Applications
  2. Select Utilities
  3. Select Terminal
  4. Type in traceroute  [domain name] (e.g. traceroute one.nz)

How will I know I've been successful?

An example of a Trace Route.

C:\>tracert one.nz

Tracing route to one.nz [203.29.160.32]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 150 ms 150 ms 150 ms tnt8.akl.ihug.co.nz [203.29.165.107]

2 141 ms 141 ms 150 ms feth-0-1-tig-nz-akl-1.ihug.net [203.29.165.254]

3 180 ms 180 ms 180 ms transient.ihug.co.nz [203.29.161.245]

4 150 ms 150 ms 191 ms ihug.co.nz [203.29.160.32]

Trace complete.

C:\>

As seen here there were 4 hops (stages) for this connection, and each stage had similar latency.

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