TRACEROUTE
What is Traceroute?
Traceroute is another diagnostic tool similar to ping. But Traceroute will send a packet of information to an address i.e 195.173.128.137 (turnpike.com) and then give a list of the connecting computers it used to reach the designated computer. This is useful to determine if there is a connection problem and where about the problem lies.
Traceroute can be found in programs like Turnpike, but it does comes with Windows
95/98, however to use Traceroute in Windows you will need to use a DOS prompt to initiate
a traceroute command.
Although the log above may look confusing, it displays information regarding the time
taken for packets of information to reach each point, in milli-seconds, and the name of
each point reached, i.e. birmingham.bt.net
Below is an log taken from a traceroute where a connection was down and the log shows
that there was no reply from a certain computer.
As you can see the last successful 'hop' was 207.46.129.3, and from then onwards no more packets could be sent.
Traceroute is used in conjunction with ping to enable the location of a possible problem to be found.