How To Do a Traceroute

Overview

Traceroute is a network diagnostic tool that displays the route taken by packets across a network and measures any transit delays. Most operating systems support the traceroute command.

See the instructions for running traceroute on different operating systems below.

Run traceroute on Windows

1. Open the Start menu.
2. Click Run.
3. To open the command line interface, type cmd and then click OK.
4. At the command line prompt, type:
   For IPv4 –
   > tracert yourdomain.com

          For IPv6 – 

Run traceroute on Linux

1. Open a terminal window.
2. At the command line prompt, type:
   For IPv4 –
   > traceroute yourdomain.com

          For IPv6 –

3. You can copy the results to save to a file or paste in another program.

Run traceroute on Mac OS

1. Open the Applications folder on your Mac. You can do this by clicking on the half-blue, half-gray face icon in your Dock. Then look for the Applications folder in the left sidebar of the Finder window. Or you can click anywhere on your desktop and press the Command + Shift + A keys on your keyboard at the same time.
2. Then open the Utilities folder.
3. Then type traceroute followed by a space and then a website or IP address.
4. Finally, hit Enter on your keyboard and wait for the traceroute results. You will know that the traceroute is complete when you see your Mac’s name after the numbered traceroute results.