TRACE ROUTE

Understanding a Traceroute

Traceroute identifies the route taken to a destination by sending ICMP (internet control message protocol) echo packets with TTL (time-to-live) value to the destination. Each router on a network decrements the TTL packet by 1 and then forwards it, this way TTL effectively counts hops (path) on a network. When the TTL packet reaches 0, then router discards to send back an ICMP time exceeded message to the source. Source system determines the route by sending first echo packet with TTL of 1 and increment the TTL value by 1 on each transmission until target responds or maximum TTL hops reached (i.e. usually 30 hops) When you supply the command in command prompt window, you will see the result E:\>tracert cecmohali.org Tracing route to cecmohali.org [67.228.225.209] over a maximum of 30 hops: 1 17 ms 19 ms 18 ms 59.94.176.1 2 23 ms 22 ms 27 ms 218.248.255.18 3 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 218.248.255.18 4 278 ms 279 ms 277 ms 125.17.0.157 5 278 ms 279 ms 279 ms 125.21.167.29 6 280 ms 278 ms 280 ms 12.86.240.17 7 315 ms 314 ms 315 ms tbr2.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.104.90] 8 315 ms 314 ms 315 ms cr2.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.19.229] 9 314 ms 315 ms 314 ms cr2.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.31.134] 10 316 ms 314 ms 315 ms cr1.st6wa.ip.att.net [12.122.31.193] 11 314 ms 315 ms 314 ms tbr1.st6wa.ip.att.net [12.122.23.130] 12 313 ms 312 ms 312 ms 12.127.6.202 13 357 ms 356 ms 357 ms 12.118.34.18 14 347 ms 347 ms 347 ms border1.t8-1-bbnet2.sef003.pnap.net [63.251.160.85] 15 346 ms 347 ms 346 ms te1-1.cer01.sea01.seattle-datacenter.com [63.251.162.74] 16 311 ms 311 ms 313 ms po01.fcr01.sea01.seattle-datacenter.com [67.228.118.134] 17 312 ms 313 ms 312 ms quick.bagfull.net [67.228.225.209] Trace complete.

Now understand the result

1. It produced five column results. 2. First column shows the hop number.

3. Other three columns show the round trip times in millisecond (ms) to reach the destination with their TTL value. 4. Fifth column shows the HOST name (if it is resolved) and IP address of responding system. Some time asterisk "*" sign shown in result means request time out because usually responds time is less than of 500 milliseconds(ms). You have gain lots of network information from them.