Practical no.

15

Aim: trace the path of web site using tracert utility

Theory :
Tracing the Path of website : it involves following steps
Tracert is a Windows based command-line tool that you can use to trace the path
that an Internet Protocol (IP) packet takes to its destination from a source. Tracert
will determine the path taken to a destination. It does this by sending Internet
Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Echo Request messages to the destination.
When sending traffic to the destination, it will incrementally increase the Time to
Live (TTL) field values to aid in finding the path taken to that destination address.
The path is outlined from this process.
Tracert, if used properly, can help you find points in your network in
website that are either routed incorrectly or are not existent at all.
Using the following illustration, let’s take a look at how tracert would
function in a production network in website.
How to Use Tracert : As you saw in the last illustration, we will be sending
traffic from a test workstation from Site B to a server at another site (Site A). The
packets will traverse the wide area network (WAN) that separates the two sites
over a T1 with a backup link via Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN). To use
the tracert utility, you simply need to know what your destination IP address is
and how to use the tracert utility correctly as well as what to look for within the
results.
works by manipulating the Time to Live (TTL). By increasing the TTL
and then each router decrementing as it sends it along to the next router, you will
have a hop count from your source to your destination. A router hop would be a
packet sent from one router to another router – that’s a hop. When the TTL on
the packet reaches zero (0), the router sends an ICMP “Time Exceeded” message
back to the source computer. You can see an example of our sample network
here in the next illustration; with a source and destination IP address… we will be
using the workstation on Site B and a server at Site A for our test.
From this illustration you can see that the source IP will be 10.1.2.4 and the
destination (for this example) will be 10.1.1.6. The normal route the packets
should take would be from Site B to Site A over the higher capacity link, the T1
(1.544 Mbps). The ISDN link is 128 Kbps and is used as a backup if the primary link
fails. Tracert once fired up and used will be able to show you that the packets sent
will start from Site B, the PC at 10.1.2.4 and then traverse the T1 to 10.1.1.1. That
router will know how to send the packets to its local LAN (10.1.1.0) and ultimately
to 10.1.1.6.
As the packets are sent, tracert will use the first interface on the
router that it sees to report back your router hops, so let’s take a look at our
complete path before we send the test packets.
The way tracert works is, once launched and utilized, tracert will report (print out)
a list in the order in which it heard back from each host that it passed on its way
to its intended destination. This is good because you can learn much from this
path. If you are getting ‘near side’ interfaces, then you would see a new set of IP
addresses in the next illustration (192.168.10.1 and 192.168.11.1) 10.1 is used for
the ISDN link and 11.1 is used for the T1 link. Why is this important?

When you get results back from tracert, this could be confusing to some who are
not adept with working with this tool, you will see WAN addressing instead of Site
A’s default gateway router which is 10.1.1.1. It’s the same router, but it’s a
different interface. This is imperative for you to know when testing with tracert,
because if you confuse this, you will not know what you are reading.

Example : the path as you see in the last illustration is from 10.1.2.4 and then
to 10.1.2.1 (the LAN’s default gateway), and then it will traverse the WAN to
10.1.1.1. The only problem here is that you will not see that address come up.
Since the T1 has an interface on Site A’s router (11.1), and so does the ISDN link
(10.1), these are the two IP address that are most important in the results of
tracert – this is because in this example, the T1 may be down and now the path is
over the ISDN link. This is working ‘as advertised’, but what happens when you
bring the T1 back online – aside from feeling your network crawl from moving
from a T1 at 1.544 Mbps to a 128 Kbps – is that you should not be using the ISDN
link anymore. This is what we are going to test…
Note :
Here are some important notes that I have compiled to help you learn more
about tracert.
Tracert also doesn’t help you to find ‘latency’. To trace a path and
provide network latency and packet loss for each router and link in the path, use
the pithing command. Visit my author section on this site to learn about pathping.
Tracert is available only if the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol
is installed as a component in the properties of a network adapter in Network
Connections. This is a TCP/IP utility that uses ICMP, a protocol within the TCP/IP
protocol suite.
On modern Linux distros the traceroute (not tracert although some Linux systems
allow you to use tracert too!) utility uses UDP datagram’s with a port number of
33434. Windows uses ICMP echo req :

Traceroute :
It is a utility that records the Internet route (gateway computers at each hop)
between your computer and a specified destinlaa¢ation computer. It also
calculates and displays the amount of time for each hop. This utility helps you find
where high transfer times are occurring in your internal network and the Internet.
Before using Traceroute, you can use the Ping utility to identify whether a host is
present on the network. For more information, see Running and Reading a Ping.

Steps to run a tracert :

1. Windows key + R to open the Run window.
2. cmd and press Enter to open a Command Prompt.
3. Enter tracert, a space, then the IP address or web address for the
destination site (for example: tracert www.lexis.com).
4. Press Enter.
Take the following steps to run a traceroute in Mac OS®:
Steps :
1. the Spotlight icon in the Menu bar.
Note: The icon looks like a magnifying glass.
2. Enter Network Utility into the Spotlight Search field.
3. Double-click Network Utility from the Top Hit list.
4. the Traceroute tab.
5. Network address or web address for the destination site and click Trace.
Reading a Tracert :
The traceroute application sends three packets from your computer to your
traceroute destination and waits for them to return. Each time traceroute
receives packets, it sends three new packets. The traceroute application times the
transmission of these packets to every hop between your computer and the
targeted destination terminal. The traceroute report displays these items in a list.
Packets that fail to return (dropped packets) are indicated with an asterisk (*).
Consistent indications of transmission times that exceed 600 milliseconds indicate
a possible connectivity problem.

Windows :
To do a traceroute on a Windows computer we’ll use the TRACERT utility.
Click the Windows icon and type “cmd.”
Click the “Command Prompt” link or icon.
Type “tracert” followed by the domain name that you want to trace to. Hit the
“Enter” key on your keyboard.The traceroute will run and the results will

Making Sense of the Results :

When your computer connects to a website, it travels a path that goes through
several points, starting with your home router, then moving on to your ISP, then
out onto the Internet. Your request will bounce through several computers (a.k.a.
routers or gateways) along the way until it gets to the website’s local network
(the web host’s data center) then finally to the server itself.
Each stop along the way is known as a “hop

Here’s how our example breaks down:

So as you can see, the traceroute shows the path and the response times for each
stop along the route. If there’s a connection problem anywhere along the way,
you’ll see it in the response times.
Our demonstration traceroute doesn’t show any problems. Any response time of
150 ms or less is pretty standard for a traceroute where your computer and the
webserver are in the same country.
A traceroute that has to travel to another country will often reflect the distance in
increased response times. Like this traceroute from my computer in California to
a server in China:
What You’re Seeing in Each Line of the Traceroute
Let’s break down one of the lines in our test trace to show you what kind of
information is in there.
First is the hop number which is just the number of the hop on the route to the
target server.
Next are the round trip times (in miliseconds) for your packets to reach the router
and return to your computer. There are three round trip times because the
traceroute sends three separate packets in order to show the consistency of the
route.Finally, the domain name and IP address of the router.What the traceroute
lines mean

Time Out! This Must Be the Problem!

Sometimes you’ll see a time out in the traceroute.
That could mean that a router is down. Or it could mean that the router is
configured not to return results to a traceroute. It could also mean that the router
has a firewall enabled, or it is returning a time-out result for all the hops before it.
As I mentioned earlier, there are some deep technical weeds you can get lost in
when interpreting traceroute results. Things are not always what they seem.
“Request timed out” is one of those things that is not always what it appears.

How to Copy and Paste Traceroute Results

If you’ve been asked to share your results with a support representative, you’ll
need to paste them into your ticket.Right-click inside the command prompt
window and select “Mark.”
Click and drag your mouse over the area you wish to copy.
Click and drag over copy area
Hit the “Enter” key on your keyboard (or right-click in the title bar of the
command prompt window and select Edit > Copy).
Now you can paste into a text file or support ticket.
You can also use this cool trick to write traceroute results to a text file. From the
command prompt run:
Tracert ggexample.com > C:\Users\mjp\Desktop\traceroute.txt
When I run this example, it performs the trace and writes the results to a file
named traceroute.txt on the desktop of my computer.
You can change C:\ to any folder or path where you want to save the file.
You won’t get a confirmation that the command has completed, just a blank
prompt.
Run the command to create a text file

Conclusion :
Using tracert utility we successfully trace the path of web site.