Running A Trace Route Command

Hostek.Staff · August 10, 2018, 3:55pm

Running A Trace Route Command

Trace Route (traceroute) is a computer network diagnostic tool for displaying the route (Path) and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network. This method of diagnosing a connection can be very beneficial when there is an issue with internet connection but then there isn’t an obvious source for the disconnect between local instance to the remote instance.

The traceroute command will reveal the various route interactions from point [A] to [B] as your machine attempts to connect to the designated host.

Trace Route Command In Windows

To run the “Trace Route” command in the Windows OS, environment please follow the steps below:

Click Start
For Windows XP Click Run and Type cmd
Windows 7 users type cmd and hit enter
In the command prompt type
```
tracert domain.com
```
You can also output the tracert command results into a text file by running the following command:
```
tracert domain.com > C:\path\to\file\tracert.txt 
```

Trace Route Command In Mac OS X

To use the Mac OS X Network Utility to run a traceroute command please following the steps listed:

Launch Network Utility. You can do this through Mac OS X Spotlight by typing Network Utility and then clicking the Top Hit.
Click ‘Traceroute’.
Next enter the IP address or Domain that would need to look up. Ex. www.hostek.com
Click Trace.

Note: You can copy and paste the results into a text file to share the output.

To run a traceroute command in the Terminal please follow the steps below:

Open up the Terminal
- Open up Appliations >> Utilities >> Terminal
Type
```
 traceroute domain.com
```
You can also output the traceroute command results into a text file by running the following command:
```
 traceroute domain.com > /tmp/traceroute.txt
```