tracert

tracert (short for trace route) is a command-line utility that helps you diagnose network connectivity issues by showing the path that packets take to reach a destination host.

It works by sending ICMP Echo Request packets with increasing Time-To-Live (TTL) values, then reporting the IP address of each router (hop) along the path.

Syntax

tracert [options] <hostname or IP>

Example:

tracert google.com

What It Shows

Each line in the output represents a hop. For each hop, it shows:

  1. Hop number

  2. Round-trip times for 3 attempts (in milliseconds)

  3. Hostname and/or IP address of the router

Sample Output

Tracing route to google.com [142.250.64.78] over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms     2 ms  192.168.1.1
  2    10 ms     9 ms    11 ms  10.0.0.1
  3    20 ms    22 ms    21 ms  example.isp.net [203.0.113.1]
  ...
 12    45 ms    47 ms    44 ms  google.com [142.250.64.78]

Trace complete.

Options and Parameters

OptionDescription
-dSkip DNS resolution — faster output, IP addresses only.
-h <maxhops>Set maximum number of hops (default is 30).
-w <timeout>Set timeout (in milliseconds) to wait for each reply (default is 4000 ms).
-4Use IPv4 only.
-6Use IPv6 only.
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