Tracert

Tracert is a TCP/IP utility which determines the route taken. It does this by sending out packets with varying TTL (time to live). Each way station along the route is supposed to decrease the TTL value by 1 before passing it on. When the count reaches Zero, the router will return respond to the sender that the time was exceeded. Thus, the first packet is sent with a TTL (hop count) of 1 and then incremented until the destination is reached.

Some routers just drops packets with a Zero count and thus becomes invisible to tracert.

tracert [-d] [-h maximum_hops] [-j host-list] [-w timeout] target_name

-d	Do not to resolve addresses to host names
-h maximum_hops	specifies the max TTL (hop count) to use to find target
-j host-list	specifies a route along the host list - loose
-w timeout	Waits for the timeout milliseconds for repsonse
target_name	specifies the name of the destination

C:\>tracert www.hildrum.com

Tracing route to hildrum.com [207.159.136.230]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1007 ms 839 ms 1477 ms max44.seattle.wa.ms.uu.net [207.76.5.50]
2 1148 ms 745 ms 155 ms ar1.seattle.wa.ms.uu.net [207.76.5.3]
3 168 ms 193 ms 159 ms Fddi0-0.CR2.SEA1.Alter.Net [137.39.33.42]
4 * 194 ms 151 ms Fddi1-0.GW2.SEA1.Alter.Net [137.39.42.194]
5 203 ms 162 ms 184 ms lightrealm-gw.customer.ALTER.NET [157.130.176.50]
6 220 ms 216 ms 183 ms hildrum.com [207.159.136.230]

Trace complete.

What does it mean ?? I used tracert from my connection to my web site here. As can be seen my connection is not all that great at the moment. The first 3 packets sent with a hop count of 1 took forever. Then thereafter things got ok. The round trip to my web site was 220, 216, 183 msec and it took 6 hops to get there.

A nice little utility which can be used quite effectively for diagnosis of networks and routes. It can also be used to find IP addresses for items you only know by name.