Trace the route to a host
Read-only
What do risk levels mean?
- Read-only
- Inspects state without changing anything.
- Low risk
- Reversible with a routine follow-up command.
- Medium risk
- Changes state; undo path documented.
- Destructive
- Deletes or overwrites; confirmation required.
Shows every network hop between this machine and a remote host, useful for locating where latency or packet loss is introduced along the path.
networktraceroutelatencyrouting
Parameters
Hostname or IP address to trace the route to.
Commands
List each hop on the path with per-hop round-trip times
traceroute <host>Verification
traceroute <host>A numbered list of hops ending at the target host, or asterisks where hops do not respond.
Undo
Not undoable
This recipe only probes the network path and changes nothing.
Pitfalls
- Rows of asterisks mid-path are common — many routers deprioritize or drop probe replies — and only matter if latency jumps for all subsequent hops too.
- Linux traceroute uses UDP probes by default while Windows tracert uses ICMP, so the two can show different paths through the same network.
- The verification command uses macOS/Linux syntax; on Windows use "tracert {{host}}".