Why is tracert command used

FYI, MiniTool software provides professional data recovery software, disk partition manager, system backup and restore software, and more. Below you can check how to use Tracert utility commands to troubleshoot Windows network problems.

You can use different Trace Route command switches after tracert to conduct different network diagnostics on Windows Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the VP and General Manager of Lifewire.

The tracert command is a Command Prompt command that's used to show several details about the path that a packet takes from the computer or device you're on to whatever destination you specify.

You might also sometimes see the tracert command referred to as the trace route command or traceroute command. Tracert, as it's explained below, applies to Windows only, but the traceroute command is available for Linux , too. The availability of certain tracert command switches and other tracert command syntax may differ from operating system to operating system. See How to Read Command Syntax if you're having a hard time understanding the tracert syntax as it's shown above or explained in the table below.

Other less commonly used options for the tracert command also exist, including [ -j HostList ], [ -R ], and [ -S SourceAddress ]. Use the help switch with the tracert command for more information on these options. Save the lengthy results of a tracert command to a file with a redirection operator. In the above example, the tracert command is used to show the path from the networked computer on which the tracert command is being executed by a network device, in this case, a router on a local network, that's assigned the The result displayed on the screen will look something like this:.

In this example, you can see that tracert found a network device using the IP address of With the tracert command shown above, we're asking tracert to show us the path from the local computer all the way to the network device with the hostname www.

In this example, we can see that tracert identified fifteen network devices including our router at Hops 4 through 12 were excluded above just to keep the example simple. If you were executing a real tracert, those results would all show up on screen. Can you help us improve? Resolved my issue.

Clear instructions. Easy to follow. No jargon. Pictures helped. Didn't match my screen. Incorrect instructions. Too technical. As we have seen, the Tracert command not only helps us to know which route the sending of a data packet takes to its final host destination.

But it also helps us to diagnose the performance of the network, if there is a fault in any internal router of our local network, or if there is a problem in some external router to another server. Without a doubt, the tracert command can clarify many doubts and questions about a network problem that we have. If you have any questions, leave it to us in the comments.

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