To find the path to a destination system, you need to use the tracert command. true false

Last modified: March 9, 2020

Overview

What is a traceroute function?

When you connect to another computer, your traffic does not go directly to the machine you are attempting to connect to. Instead it goes through multiple machines on the Internet known as routers. These machines serve the sole purpose of controlling how your traffic gets to your destination. If any one connection fails, you will not be able to connect to the intended destination.

There is a common utility known as traceroute, or tracert in DOS and Windows. The purpose of this utility is to show you the path your traffic takes when you are attempting to connect to another machine.

How to use traceroute command to diagnose network routing issues

If you believe you are having network routing issues, this can be checked fairly quickly using a traceroute command. The process simply entails opening a Terminal box, and running the traceroute command from whichever device is experiencing an error.
If the traceroute outputs either a * * * or a Request Time Out, then you know there's likely a network related issue. 

NOTE:

• If a support agent has requested traceroute information from you, please also provide them with the IP of the location where the trace was performed (to find your IP address, click here) as well as a full timestamp of when it was performed (provide the date, time and timezone of your location).
• Be sure to replace example.com with your domain name or access domain.
• You will see a result with some gibberish letters, and then gsXX.gridserver.com as your final result. The series letters before .gridserver.com (as well as the final IP address) may change if you run the command more than once. This is because the Grid uses multiple web nodes, and you could hit one of several.

Instructions

Perform a traceroute on Windows

1. Click on start.
2. Click in the search box.
3. Then type cmd (you may need to type command in Windows 95/98/ME).
4. Once you have your Terminal box open, just type in the following but be sure to replace example.com with your domain name:

   tracert example.com

   You can also use your access domain:

   tracert s00000.gridserver.com
   

5. You should see a response similar to the following:

   Tracing route to example.com [64.13.192.208]
   over a maximum of 30 hops:
   
   1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  72.10.62.1
   2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.101.248.1
   3     1 ms    <1 ms     1 ms  10.104.65.161
   4     1 ms     5 ms     1 ms  10.104.0.1
   5     2 ms     2 ms     3 ms  10.0.10.33
   6     5 ms     3 ms     2 ms  acmkokeaig.gs01.gridserver.com [64.13.192.208]
   
   Trace complete.
   

Perform a traceroute on Mac

1. Click on Hard Drive.
2. Open Applications.
3. Open Utilities.
4. Click on Terminal to open the command prompt.
5. Once you have your Terminal box open, type in the following but be sure to replace example.com with your domain name.

   
   traceroute example.com
   

   Or, you can use your access domain.

   
   traceroute s00000.gridserver.com
   

6. You should see a response similar to the following:

   traceroute to example.com (64.13.192.208), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
   1  72.10.62.1 (72.10.62.1)  1.000 ms  0.739 ms  0.702 ms
   2  10.101.248.1 (10.101.248.1)  0.683 ms  0.385 ms  0.315 ms
   3  10.104.65.161 (10.104.65.161)  0.791 ms  0.703 ms  0.686 ms
   4  10.104.0.1 (10.104.0.1)  1.430 ms  1.310 ms  1.063 ms
   5  10.0.10.33 (10.0.10.33)  2.652 ms  2.260 ms  5.353 ms
   6  acmkokeaig.gs01.gridserver.com (64.13.192.208)  3.384 ms  8.001 ms  2.439 ms
   

If you do not wish to deal with traceroute on your own computer, you may use what is known as a "Looking Glass" server. These are publicly available traceroute servers provided by volunteers as a free service. You may find a list of them at http://www.traceroute.org/. Please keep in mind that these results could be inconsistent with the results from your own location, and thus they can be less useful as they use a different path to the server.

Understanding the traceroute

In the results you will see the comment, "over a maximum of 30 hops or 64." All this means is that the diameter of the Internet is roughly 30 or 64 hops. Therefore, many trace routes will only go that far out in trying to reach a destination.

The first column is the hop number, which is the Time-To-Live (TTL) value set in the packet.

The next three columns contains the round-trip times in milliseconds for an attempt to reach the destination with the TTL value. The last column is the host name (if it was resolved) and IP address of the responding system.

NOTE:

Your traceroute will display the same information but the columns may possibly be in a different order.

Tips

If you see either of the following errors it is possible that the domain is not registered or does not exist.

Unable to resolve target system name example.com

unknown host example.com

Another thing to keep an eye out for is a Timeout. This can indicate you have a network/firewall issue that is preventing you from reaching your server:

Tracing route to example.com [64.13.192.208]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  72.10.62.1
2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.101.248.1
3        *        *        *  Request Time Out
4        *        *        *  Request Time Out
5        *        *        *  Request Time Out
6        *        *        *  Request Time Out

Trace complete.

Last modified: March 09, 2020

Overview

What is a traceroute function?

When you connect to another computer, your traffic does not go directly to the machine you are attempting to connect to. Instead it goes through multiple machines on the Internet known as routers. These machines serve the sole purpose of controlling how your traffic gets to your destination. If any one connection fails, you will not be able to connect to the intended destination.

There is a common utility known as traceroute, or tracert in DOS and Windows. The purpose of this utility is to show you the path your traffic takes when you are attempting to connect to another machine.

How to use traceroute command to diagnose network routing issues

If you believe you are having network routing issues, this can be checked fairly quickly using a traceroute command. The process simply entails opening a Terminal box, and running the traceroute command from whichever device is experiencing an error.

If the traceroute outputs either a * * * or a Request Time Out, then you know there's likely a network related issue.

NOTE:

• If a support agent has requested traceroute information from you, please also provide them with the IP of the location where the trace was performed (to find your IP address, click here) as well as a full timestamp of when it was performed (provide the date, time and timezone of your location).
• Be sure to replace example.com with your domain name or access domain.

Need further assistance with your server? Advanced Support can help!

Instructions

Perform a traceroute on Windows

1. Click on start.
2. Click in the search box.
3. Then type cmd (you may need to type command in Windows 95/98/ME).
4. Once you have your Terminal box open, just type in the following but be sure to replace example.com with your domain name:

   tracert example.com

5. It is also possible to run a traceroute using your access domain or IP:
   

   tracert rcbi-b1hp.accessdomain.com

   tracert 64.13.192.208
   

6. It is also possible to run a traceroute using your access domain or primary domain. To find this info, log into your account center and open your Managed WordPress service. Then click on Domains, found in the My Site menu on the left. You can also use the Domains tab at the top of the account center.  
   

   tracert xxxx-xxxx.accessdomain.com

7. Alternatively, you can use your access domain.
   

   tracert xxxx-xxxx.accessdomain.com

8. You should see a response similar to the following:

   Tracing route to example.com [64.13.192.208]
   over a maximum of 30 hops:
   
   1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  72.10.62.1
   2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.101.248.1
   3     1 ms    <1 ms     1 ms  10.104.65.161
   4     1 ms     5 ms     1 ms  10.104.0.1
   5     2 ms     2 ms     3 ms  10.0.10.33
   6     5 ms     3 ms     2 ms  example.com [64.13.192.208]
   
   Trace complete.
   

Perform a traceroute on Mac

1. The Terminal application that you need is located in the Utilities folder. To quickly locate it, click on the search icon in the top right corner and type 'Terminal'.
2. Open the Terminal app.
3. Once you have your Terminal box open, type in the following but be sure to replace example.com with your domain name.

   
   traceroute example.com
   

4. It is also possible to run a traceroute using your access domain or IP.

   traceroute rcbi-b1hp.accessdomain.com 

5. Alternatively, you can use your access domain.
   

   traceroute xxxx-xxxx.accessdomain.com

6. It is also possible to run a traceroute using your access domain or primary domain. To find this info, log into your account center and open your Managed WordPress service. Then click on Domains, found in the My Site menu on the left. You can also use the Domains tab at the top of the account center.
   

   tracert rcbi-b1hp.accessdomain.com

7. You should see a response similar to the following:

   traceroute to example.com (64.13.192.208), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
   1  72.10.62.1 (72.10.62.1)  1.000 ms  0.739 ms  0.702 ms
   2  10.101.248.1 (10.101.248.1)  0.683 ms  0.385 ms  0.315 ms
   3  10.104.65.161 (10.104.65.161)  0.791 ms  0.703 ms  0.686 ms
   4  10.104.0.1 (10.104.0.1)  1.430 ms  1.310 ms  1.063 ms
   5  10.0.10.33 (10.0.10.33)  2.652 ms  2.260 ms  5.353 ms
   6  www.example.com (64.13.192.208)  3.384 ms  8.001 ms  2.439 ms
   

If you do not wish to deal with traceroute on your own computer, you may use what is known as a "Looking Glass" server. These are publicly available traceroute servers provided by volunteers as a free service. You may find a list of them at http://www.traceroute.org/. Please keep in mind that these results could be inconsistent with the results from your own location, and thus they can be less useful as they use a different path to the server.

Understanding the traceroute

In the results you will see the comment, "over a maximum of 30 hops or 64." All this means is that the diameter of the Internet is roughly 30 or 64 hops. Therefore, many trace routes will only go that far out in trying to reach a destination.

The first column is the hop number, which is the Time-To-Live (TTL) value set in the packet.

The next three columns contains the round-trip times in milliseconds for an attempt to reach the destination with the TTL value. The last column is the host name (if it was resolved) and IP address of the responding system.

NOTE:

Your traceroute will display the same information but the columns may possibly be in a different order.

Tips

If you see either of the following errors it is possible that the domain is not registered or does not exist.

Unable to resolve target system name example.com

unknown host example.com

Another thing to keep an eye out for is a Timeout. This can indicate you have a network/firewall issue that is preventing you from reaching your server:

Tracing route to example.com [64.13.192.208]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  72.10.62.1
2    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.101.248.1
3        *        *        *  Request Time Out
4        *        *        *  Request Time Out
5        *        *        *  Request Time Out
6        *        *        *  Request Time Out

Trace complete.

Advanced Support can help!

Need further assistance with your server? Help is available via Advanced Support, our premium services division. For more information on what Advanced Support can do for you, feel free to click here.

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