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object-src 'none'; report-uri /w/api.php?action=cspreport&format=json; report-to csp-report-to-endpoint last-modified: Sat, 27 Jun 2026 07:21:26 GMT content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 age: 0 accept-ranges: bytes x-cache: cp2047 hit, cp2047 miss x-cache-status: hit-local server-timing: cache;desc="hit-local", host;desc="cp2047" strict-transport-security: max-age=106384710; includeSubDomains; preload report-to: { "group": "wm_nel", "max_age": 604800, "endpoints": [{ "url": "https://intake-logging.wikimedia.org/v1/events?stream=w3c.reportingapi.network_error&schema_uri=/w3c/reportingapi/network_error/1.0.0" }] } nel: { "report_to": "wm_nel", "max_age": 604800, "failure_fraction": 0.05, "success_fraction": 0.0} set-cookie: WMF-Last-Access=03-Jul-2026;Path=/;HttpOnly;secure;Expires=Tue, 04 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT set-cookie: WMF-Last-Access-Global=03-Jul-2026;Path=/;Domain=.wikipedia.org;HttpOnly;secure;Expires=Tue, 04 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT set-cookie: WMF-DP=94f;Path=/;HttpOnly;secure;Expires=Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT x-client-ip: 75.28.18.94 cache-control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate, no-transform vary: Accept-Encoding,X-Subdomain,Cookie,Authorization,User-Agent set-cookie: GeoIP=US:TX:McKinney:33.20:-96.62:v4; 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For the film, see Traceroute (film) . traceroute The traceroute6 command Original author Van Jacobson Release 1987 ; 39 years ago  ( 1987 ) Platform Unix-like systems Type Command tracert Developers Microsoft , ReactOS Contributors Platform Windows , ReactOS Type Command License Microsoft Windows: Proprietary commercial software ReactOS: GNU General Public License In computing , traceroute and tracert are diagnostic command-line interface commands for displaying possible routes (paths) and transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network . The ping utility only computes the final round-trip times from the destination point, while route-tracing utilities can show more detail, such as the round-trip times of the packets received from each successive host (remote node) along the route to a destination and the sum of the mean times in each hop as a measure of the total time spent to establish the connection. For Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), the tool sometimes has the name traceroute6 [ 1 ] and tracert6 . [ 2 ] Implementations [ edit ] A command is available in many modern operating systems , generally named traceroute in Unix-like systems such as FreeBSD , macOS , and Linux and named tracert in Windows and ReactOS . On Linux, tracepath is a utility similar to traceroute, with the primary difference of not requiring superuser privileges. [ 3 ] Tracepath is part of the iputils group that contains the package ping . [ 4 ] The functionality was available graphically in macOS, but has been deprecated since the release of macOS Big Sur . [ 5 ] Windows NT -based operating systems also provide PathPing , which combines the functionality of ping with that of tracert. On Unix-like operating systems, traceroute sends, by default, a sequence of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets, with destination port numbers ranging from 33434 to 33534; the implementations of traceroute shipped with Linux , [ 6 ] FreeBSD , [ 7 ] NetBSD , [ 8 ] OpenBSD , [ 9 ] DragonFly BSD , [ 10 ] and macOS include an option to use ICMP Echo Request packets ( -I ), or any arbitrary protocol ( -P ) such as UDP, TCP using TCP SYN packets, or ICMP. [ 11 ] On Windows, tracert sends ICMP Echo Request packets, rather than the UDP packets traceroute sends by default. [ 12 ] The time-to-live (TTL) value, also known as hop limit , is used in determining the intermediate routers being traversed towards the destination. Traceroute sends packets with TTL values that gradually increase from packet to packet, starting with TTL value of one. Routers decrement TTL values of packets by one when routing and discard packets whose TTL value has reached zero, returning the ICMP error message ICMP Time Exceeded . [ 11 ] For the first set of packets, the first router receives the packet, decrements the TTL value and drops the packet because it then has TTL value zero. The router sends an ICMP Time Exceeded message back to the source. The next set of packets are given a TTL value of two, so the first router forwards the packets, but the second router drops them and replies with ICMP Time Exceeded. Proceeding in this way, traceroute uses the returned ICMP Time Exceeded messages to build a list of routers that packets traverse, until the destination is reached and returns an ICMP Destination Unreachable message if UDP packets are being used or an ICMP Echo Reply message if ICMP Echo messages are being used. [ 11 ] The timestamp values returned for each router along the path are the delay ( latency ) values, typically measured in milliseconds for each packet. The sender expects a reply within a configured number of seconds. If a packet is not acknowledged within the expected interval, an asterisk is displayed. The Internet Protocol does not require packets to take the same route towards a particular destination, thus hosts listed might be hosts that other packets have traversed. If the host at hop #N does not reply, the hop is skipped in the output. If a network has a firewall and operates both Windows and Unix-like systems, more than one protocol must be enabled inbound through the firewall for traceroute to work and receive replies. Some traceroute implementations use TCP packets, such as tcptraceroute and layer four traceroute (lft). PathPing is a utility introduced with Windows NT that combines ping and traceroute functionality. MTR is an enhanced version of ICMP traceroute available for Unix-like and Windows systems. The various implementations of traceroute all rely on ICMP Time Exceeded (type 11) packets being sent to the source. Cisco 's implementation of traceroute also uses a sequence of UDP datagrams, each with incrementing TTL values, to an invalid port number at the remote host; by default, UDP port 33434 is used. An extended version of this command (known as the extended traceroute command) can change the destination port number used by the UDP probe messages. [ 13 ] Usage [ edit ] Router addresses can be superimposed upon maps of their physical locations. This example shows a request from New Zealand to an IP address in Massachusetts which takes a route that passes through Europe. Most implementations include options to specify the number of queries to send per hop, time to wait for a response, the hop limit and port to use. Invoking traceroute with no options displays the list of available options For Linux, man traceroute presents more details, including the displayed error flags. For example: $ traceroute -w 3 -q 1 -m 16 example.com traceroute to example.com (93.184.216.34), 16 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 192.x.x.x (192.x.x.x) 5.152 ms 2 10.x.x.x (10.x.x.x) 12.767 ms 3 172.x.x.x (172.x.x.x) 11.638 ms 4 172.x.x.x (172.x.x.x) 13.193 ms 5 xxx.x.x.x.cox.net (68.x.x.x) 20.624 ms 6 xxx.xxx.xxx.edgecastcdn.net (192.x.x.x) 56.205 ms 7 xxx.xxx.xxx.edgecastcdn.net (192.x.x.x) 24.573 ms 8 * 9 * 10 93.x.x.x (93.x.x.x) 22.810 ms 11 93.x.x.x (93.x.x.x) 20.235 ms In the example above, selected options are to wait for three seconds (instead of five), send out only one query to each hop (instead of three), limit the maximum number of hops to 16 before giving up (instead of 30), with example.com as the final host. On line 8 and 9 (TTLs 8 and 9) it shows asterisks where the router did not respond within the timeout. Value [ edit ] Traceroute can help identify incorrect routing table definitions or firewalls that may be blocking ICMP traffic, or high port UDP in Unix ping, to a site. [ clarification needed ] A correct traceroute response does not guarantee connectivity for applications as a firewall may permit ICMP packets but not permit packets of other protocols. Traceroute is used by penetration testers to gather information about network infrastructure and IP address ranges around a given host. Traceroute can be used to optimize data download. If there are multiple mirrors available for the same resource, each mirror can be traced to find the fastest. Origins [ edit ] The traceroute manual page states that the original traceroute program was written by Van Jacobson in 1987 from a suggestion by Steve Deering , and that Guy Almes and Matt Mathis also had the idea concurrent with Deering. [ 14 ] The author of the ping program, Mike Muuss , states on his website that traceroute was written using kernel ICMP support that he had earlier coded to enable raw ICMP sockets when he first wrote the ping program. [ 15 ] Limitations [ edit ] Traceroute has multiple limitations. [ 16 ] Traceroute does not discover paths at the router level, but at the interface level. Another limitation appears when routers do not respond to probes or when routers have a limit for ICMP responses. [ 17 ] In the presence of traffic load balancing , traceroute may indicate a path that does not actually exist; to minimize this problem there is a traceroute modification called Paris-traceroute, [ 18 ] which maintains the flow identifier of the probes to avoid load balancing. See also [ edit ] Looking Glass server netsniff-ng – a Linux networking toolkit with an autonomous system traceroute utility References [ edit ] ^ "Traceroute6(8) - Linux man page" . ^ "Tracert6(8): IPv6 traceroute tool - Linux man page" . ^ "tracepath(8) – Linux man page" . linux.die.net . Retrieved 2015-06-21 . ^ https://www.linuxnetwork.net/blog/iputils-set-of-small-useful-utilities-for-linux-networking/ ^ Rossingol, Joe (23 June 2020). "Network Utility Deprecated in macOS Big Sur" . MacRumors . ^ traceroute(8)  –  Linux Programmer's Manual – Administration and Privileged Commands ^ traceroute(8)  –  FreeBSD System Manager's Manual ^ traceroute(8)  –  NetBSD System Manager's Manual ^ traceroute(8)  –  OpenBSD System Manager's Manual ^ traceroute(8)  –  DragonFly BSD System Maintenance and Operation Commands Manual ^ a b c Comer, Douglas (2004). Computer Network and Internets with Internet Applications . Pearson Education, Inc. pp.  360– 362. ISBN   978-0131433519 . ^ "Tracert" . Microsoft Docs . 3 February 2023 . Retrieved July 29, 2023 . ^ "Understanding the Ping and Traceroute Commands" . Cisco IOS Software Releases 12.1 Mainline . cisco.com. 2006-11-29 . Retrieved 2013-12-08 . ^ "traceroute6.c source code" . 2022-10-04 . Retrieved 2023-09-17 . ^ "The Story of the PING Program" . ^ Ray Belleville (March 3, 2017). "Limitations of Traceroute Explained" . ^ Marchetta, P.; Montieri, A.; Persico, V.; Pescapé, A.; Cunha, Í; Katz-Bassett, E. (June 2016). How and how much traceroute confuses our understanding of network paths . 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks (LANMAN). pp.  1– 7. doi : 10.1109/lanman.2016.7548847 . ISBN   978-1-4673-9882-4 . S2CID   4643833 . ^ "Paris Traceroute" . paris-traceroute.net . Retrieved 2017-06-10 . Further reading [ edit ] Frisch, Æleen (2001). Windows 2000 Commands Pocket Reference . O'Reilly . ISBN   978-0-596-00148-3 . Stanek, William R. (2008). Windows Command-Line Administrator's Pocket Consultant, 2nd Edition . Microsoft Press . ISBN   978-0735622623 . Barrett, Daniel J. (2012). Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide: Take Command of Your Mac . O'Reilly . ISBN   978-1449328986 . External links [ edit ] Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Guide to Windows Commands RFC  1393 : Traceroute using an IP Option Internet RFC How traceroute works – InetDaemon Tracert  –  Windows XP Command-line reference v t e Unix command-line utilities and shell builtins File system cat chattr chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fuser ln ls mkdir mv pax pwd rm rmdir split tee touch type umask Processes at bg crontab fg kill nice ps time User environment env exit logname mesg talk tput uname who write Text processing awk basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fold head iconv join m4 more nl paste patch printf read sed sort strings tail tr troff uniq vi wc xargs Shell builtins alias cd echo test unset wait Searching find grep Documentation man Software development ar ctags lex make nm strip yacc Miscellaneous bc cal dc expr lp od sleep true and false Categories Standard Unix programs Unix SUS2008 utilities List v t e Windows command-line programs and shell builtins Ecosystem Interpreters COMMAND.COM Command Prompt PowerShell Recovery Console Terminals Windows Console Windows Terminal File system navigation cd (chdir) dir popd pushd tree File management attrib cacls cipher compact copy del (erase) deltree icacls mkdir (md) mklink move openfiles recover ren (rename) replace rmdir (rd) robocopy takeown xcopy Archiving expand extrac32 extract makecab pax tar Disk management chkdsk convert defrag diskcomp diskcopy diskpart diskraid diskshadow drvspace fdisk format fsutil label manage-bde MSCDEX refsutil subst scandisk sys vol vssadmin Processes at exit kill runas sc schtasks shutdown start taskkill tasklist Registry assoc ftype reg regini regsvr32 User environment chcp cmdkey date graftabl mode path set setver setx time title ver where whoami File contents comp edit edlin fc find findstr print type Scripting choice clip cscript doskey echo for forfiles goto if more pause prompt rem timeout Networking arp bitsadmin curl getmac hostname ipconfig nbtstat net netsh netstat nslookup PathPing ping rpcping route scp setspn sftp ssh ssh-add ssh-agent ssh-keygen ssh-keyscan tracert winrm winrs Maintenance and care auditpol dism dispdiag driverquery eventcreate eventtriggers gpresult gpupdate logman mofcomp msiexec ntbackup pentnt pnpunattend pnputil REAgentC relog sfc sxstrace systeminfo tpmtool tpmvscmgr tracerpt typeperf w32tm WBAdmin wecutil wevtutil winmgmt winsat wmic Boot management bcdedit bootcfg bootsect fixboot fixmbr Software development break debug exe2bin QBasic wsl Miscellaneous cls dpath help List of DOS commands Environment variables Windows Support Tools Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Traceroute&oldid=1361334597 " Categories : Windows commands Network analyzers Free network management software Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description matches Wikidata All Wikipedia articles needing clarification Wikipedia articles needing clarification from November 2020 This page was last edited on 27 June 2026, at 07:21  (UTC) . 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