What is a traceroute? What is it used for? What protocol does it use? What is a hop count? What does it measure? What does the phrase the "time to live" signify here? What is its relevance in a network and why does it have to be monitored? What is next hop?
A traceroute is a utility that records route over the internet that is between a particular destination computer and your computer. It can also display and analyze the amount of time for each hop. It is also a useful tool that can help you find the problems in the internet network.
Another utility that is used along with traceroute is ping. Ping is used to check if a host is present on the network or not. The traceroute utility is included in a number of operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and UNIX-based operating systems. It can also be a part of a TCP/IP package.
The traceroute utility is used in the command prompt and is not a clickable program in the Start menu or on the desktop. When you execute the traceroute utility, the program starts the sending of a packet using ICMP or Internet Control Message Protocol. The packet contains a time limit value called TTL or Time To Live or “time to live” which is designed to be surpassed by the first router that receives it.
This will then return a Time Exceeded message and that’s what will be displayed on your screen. To run the traceroute utility, open the command prompt and type without quotes “tracert ” where “domain” is the address of the website. For example, type without quotes “tracert www.techyv.com” and then press Enter. See image.
