The term traceroute refers both to a utility and the output of that utility. Traceroute is a utility which traces the network route between the local host computer and any other host computer connected to the Internet.
The output of the traceroute utility, which is also referred to as a "traceroute", shows each "hop" (an Internet router or another host computer) between the two end-points and the round-trip time it took for a packet to be bounced off of that hop.
Traceroutes can be very useful for locating and detecting network congestion, failures, and other various other troubleshooting issues. On Windows machines, this utility is available from the command line as "tracert.exe".
The following is instructions on how to run a traceroute, assuming your machine is Windows 2000/XP:
- From the Start Menu, select: RUN
- Type in: cmd
- In the popup window, type: tracert [domain name]
(without the brackets)
Example: tracert discountasp.net
- If our Technical Support staff asked you to run a traceroute, please capture the results and send them to our Technical Support for review.
To capture the results from the Command Prompt Screen
- Right click in the Command Prompt Screen
- Select: Select All
- Press Enter Key (This will copy the text)
- Open up Notepad
- Right click in Notepad screen
- Select: Paste
