Traceroute is a command-line software used to hint the trail taken by packets as they journey throughout an Web Protocol (IP) community. It’s generally utilized by community directors and IT professionals to troubleshoot community connectivity points and determine bottlenecks or latency issues.
Traceroute works by sending a sequence of packets to a specified vacation spot IP handle, with every packet having a barely completely different Time to Reside (TTL) worth. The TTL is a subject within the IP packet header that specifies what number of hops the packet can traverse earlier than it’s discarded. Because the packets traverse the community, every router decrements the TTL worth by one. When the TTL reaches zero, the router discards the packet and sends an Web Management Message Protocol (ICMP) Time Exceeded message again to the supply.
