What Is Traceroute?

Have you ever wondered how your packets are getting to their destination? Your packages have likely taken an exciting journey. Traceroute is a network diagnostic tool used to track the pathway taken by a packet on an IP network from source to destination. Traceroute also records the time taken for each hop the package makes during its route to the destination. For example, you send a packet from your computer to google.com. Your parcel will first travel from your computer to your router; then, it travels out onto the Internet, where it will make many stops before finally reaching Google. Come and then maybe even back again! As you can see, a traceroute can be very useful for troubleshooting connectivity issues or determining why your connection might be slow or not working well. If a traceroute tool does not receive a response after three tries, it will consider that hop to be unavailable and will not include it will not have it in the path of the traceroute. Traceroute uses UDP port 33435. UDP is a connection-less protocol, meaning no data is ever sent over the Internet in a dedicated stream between two computers. Instead, UDP sends information in small packages. UDP is faster than TCP, but it could be more reliable. UDP is like a postcard sent through the mail. It will travel to its destination, but it is not guaranteed. Traceroute is a utility used to identify routers along the path between a source and the destination computer. Can also use it to determine how data packets travel between two nodes. Traceroute is like a detective but for packages. It follows the trail of your internet connection from start to finish, tracking every hop along the way. Traceroute can help you discover if there are any problems with your relationship or on any of its bounds.