Traceroute

What is Traceroute?

Traceroute is a free online network diagnostic tool that shows the path packets take from our server to a destination host. It displays each hop (router) along the route, along with the response time at each step. This helps identify where network delays or failures occur.

Whether you're troubleshooting slow connections, diagnosing network issues, or understanding internet routing, traceroute provides valuable insights into your network path.

Key Features

How to read a traceroute

A traceroute lists every router (hop) between the network and the destination, with the round-trip time to each. Reading it is mostly about spotting where the numbers change, not the numbers themselves:

• Latency should climb gradually. Times rise as hops get geographically farther — that's normal. What matters is a sudden jump that then stays high for every hop after it: that hop (or the link into it) is where the delay is introduced.
• What do the asterisks * * * mean? A timeout for that hop's probes. It usually does not mean a problem — many routers are configured to ignore or de-prioritise the ICMP/UDP packets traceroute uses, so they stay silent while still forwarding traffic fine. Only worry if the asterisks are at the final destination or continue all the way to the end.
• A high spike on ONE hop that drops back down is also usually harmless — that single router just rate-limits its own replies. A real problem shows as high latency (or loss) that persists from a hop onward.
• Where it stops tells you how far traffic gets. If it dies a few hops in and never reaches the destination, the break is around that last responding hop — often a firewall or a down link, not your own connection.

Traceroute shows the path; to test raw reachability and packet loss to the same host, use the Ping tool. If the destination is a website behaving oddly, a Website Check tells you whether the server itself (DNS, certificate, response) is the issue rather than the network in between.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does traceroute work?

Traceroute works by sending packets with increasing TTL (Time To Live) values. Each router decrements the TTL, and when it reaches zero, the router sends back an error message revealing its identity and response time.

What does * * * mean in traceroute?

Asterisks indicate that a hop didn't respond within the timeout period. This often means the router is configured not to respond to traceroute packets, or there's packet loss at that hop.

How many hops is normal?

A typical traceroute has 10-20 hops. Very distant destinations may have more. Fewer hops generally means faster routing, though hop count alone doesn't determine speed.