How to run a traceroute from your computer Print

To run a Traceroute from your computer to a web site on the Internet, or to another device, perform the following steps based on your computer's operating system.

In Windows:

1. Open the command prompt:
   From the Start menu, select Run. (NOTE: Windows® 8 users need to right-click the Start menu.)
2. In the search field, type cmd , and then press Enter or click Ok.
3. At the command prompt, enter tracert domainname , where domainname is the name of the web site you are trying to access. You can also enter an IP address in place of the domain name.

In Mac OS X:

1. Open the Nework Utility:
   In Finder, select Applications, then expand the Utilities folder and open Network Utility by double-clicking on it.
2. In the Network Utility window, select the Traceroute tab and enter the domain name or IP address into the search box and click on Trace.

You should see output to your screen similar to the following:

traceroute to domainname.com (207.170.215.70), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 esnet3-wwweng9 (198.129.252.193) 0.328 ms 0.201 ms 0.234 ms
2 lblmr2-esnetrt3 (198.129.77.45) 0.229 ms 0.217 ms 0.238 ms
3 slacmr2-ip-lblmr2 (134.55.219.10) 26.352 ms 1.340 ms 1.237 ms
4 sunnsdn2-ip-slacmr2 (134.55.217.2) 1.735 ms 1.719 ms 1.612 ms
5 sunncr1-sunnsdn2 (134.55.209.98) 1.734 ms 1.718 ms 1.740 ms
6 paixpart1-sunncr1 (134.55.218.133) 2.483 ms 2.466 ms 2.362 ms
7 ***
8 domainname.com (207.170.215.70) 30.747 ms 30.684 ms 30.971 ms
Trace Complete.

In many cases, a network technician will need to analyze the traceroute further. To send the data for further analysis, do the following:

In Windows:

1. After the trace route has completed, right-click anywhere on this window and click Select All. 
2. Press Enter and the information will be copied to the Windows clipboard. 
3. Paste this into a text document (Notepad, WordPad, etc.).
4. Email or send the text file to the network technician.

In Mac OS X:

1. Highlight and copy the traceroute results and then paste it into an email message for sending to the network technician or paste it into an online support ticket.