How to do Traceroute from a Windows Machine

When a website is slow or inaccessible, our first thought is to assume that there is a problem with the web server. While a problem on the web server is certainly possible, it's just as likely that there is a problem somewhere along the way between the server and your computer itself. This is where the traceroute comes in, the traceroute can display where connections are failing or having delays.

Traceroute is one of the most common utilities that is built into operating systems. This utility helps you find where high transfer times are occurring in your internal network and on the Internet. It is useful for diagnosing network connections and the source of many problems. It traces the path a packet takes from your host/computer through each of the individual paths processing the packet and the time it takes to get from one router to another to the final destination(which can be a web server, mail server, or SQL server). Sometimes the tracert command is referred to as the traceroute command.

How to Run a Traceroute on Windows

To run a traceroute on a Windows machine, follow these steps:

• Open the Windows search box and type CMD in the search bar.
• Then open the Command Prompt app and type tracert followed by a space, then the domain name, server name or IP address(tracert testing.com).
• Press Enter on your keyboard and wait for the traceroute to complete. You will see the words Trace complete when the process is complete.
• You can stop a traceroute at any time by simultaneously pressing the Control + C keys on your keyboard.
• To copy the traceroute results, left-click and drag the mouse to select the traceroute results.

To Run a traceroute on a Mac, follow these steps:

• On your local computer, double-click the hard drive icon.
• Open the folder called Applications.
• Click open the Utilities folder.
• Open Network Utility.
• Select the Traceroute tab.
• Enter your website's domain name, server name, or IP address and click on Trace.

To run a traceroute on an iPhone,

• To run a traceroute command on iPhone, you need to configure a special app, for example, iNetTools - Ping, DNS, Port Scan.
• Once loaded, go to the Trace Route menu
• Paste your domain name, server name, or IP address in the input box and click Start. The output will be displayed in the result window.

To run a traceroute on an Android

• Traceroute can be checked on Android within the Network Utilities app.
• Click on the menu icon to see the list of utilities the application provides.
• Go to the Traceroute menu and paste the domain name, servers name, or servers IP address
• Select Trace to get the output, or text file and paste the traceroute results there.

To run a traceroute on a Linux,

• Open a Terminal window and type: traceroute -I domain.com( you can use the server name or IP address)
• The -I option is necessary so that the traceroute uses ICMP.

The test will be completed within a minute or more which will generate a list of the connections and some information about the speed of the steps along the way.
Select tracert results using your mouse cursor and right-click on it to copy it into the clipboard. You can now paste it into a document and send to Support.
If you have difficulty copying the traceroute information, or if it runs off the screen, you can type this command instead: tracert hostname > C:\trace1.txt
This writes the command results to a text file named trace1.txt in the root of your C:\ drive. You can then open this file and paste the contents into your email message to Support.

How to Read Traceroute Report

As there are numerous possible causes of a network issue, having the expertise and tools to troubleshoot the error will help save time. The report produced from a traceroute process can be confusing to interpret. If there is an issue within the network, the traceroute results will display error commands such as Request timed out, Destination unreachable, * in RTT columns, and more.

Request timed out: When your website is slow and you get *** Request timed out, it means that the connection to the server is unstable/ poor or a firewall is blocking your request. You can try connecting to cPanel/website using another ISP(different connection) to resolve this issue.

Destination Unreachable: The website you are trying to reach might be down because the data packets have stopped travelling within the network

* in RTT columns: It means there is a packet loss and the router did not respond to the
request within the allotted time of two seconds. This might also mean that the router in the hop was not configured to provide a response to a traceroute request. You can ping the IP address of the router to verify if there was a packet loss.

Please note that to be effective, the traceroute test MUST run during a time when you are experiencing the problem, from a computer that is experiencing the problem. Therefore, you should try to connect to your site again just before you run it. If the problem is no longer occurring, you will have to wait until the next time the problem occurs (if there is a next time) before running your traceroute test.