What Is the Best Way to Run a Traceroute on A Windows 10 Computer?

If you are experiencing network connectivity issues, you can use traceroute to determine precisely where your connection is failing. The traceroute command will provide you with information regarding your Internet connection and website status, among other things. Next, you can provide this information to your technical support agent in order to troubleshoot network connectivity issues. Here’s how to conduct a traceroute on Windows 10 and interpret the results.

What Is Traceroute?

Traceroute is a network diagnostic tool that traces the path of a data packet as it travels over the Internet from your computer to its destination. Traceroute reveals the locations where your connection is slow or unresponsive.

The traceroute tool might be compared to a traffic map of your Internet connection. When you perform a traceroute, you will see all of the routers or “hops” that three different packets pass through on their journey to a destination. In addition, it will display your network’s latency, or the time required for each packet to transit from one hop to the next.

If you simply want to test your network’s latency, consult our detailed article on how to conduct a ping test on a Windows 10 machine.

How to Run a Traceroute on a Windows 10 Computer

To execute a traceroute on a Windows 10 machine, open the Windows search box and enter CMD. Then, launch Command Prompt and type tracert followed by a space and the URL or IP address of the target. Lastly, press Enter.

1. Open the Windows search box. You can do this by clicking the magnifying glass icon in the bottom-left corner of your screen.
2. Then type CMD in the search bar and click Open.
3. Next, type tracer followed by a space and then an IP address or URL. If you just want to test your internet connection, it is a good idea to run a traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (Google’s DNS server). You can also run a traceroute to the URL of any website or IP address. Just make sure you leave a space after tracert and before the URL or IP address. For example, to run a traceroute to HelloTech.com, you would type tracert hellotech.com into the Command Prompt app.
4. Finally, press Enter on your keyboard and wait for the traceroute to finish. You will see the words Trace complete when the process is finished. You can also stop a traceroute at any time by pressing the Control + C keys on your keyboard at the same time.

To copy the traceroute results, left-click and drag your mouse to select the traceroute results. Then press Enter on your keyboard. Next, open a document or text file and paste the traceroute results there.

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How to Read Traceroute Results

In order to interpret your traceroute findings, look for the round trip time (RTT) in the second through fourth columns. If you observe long-duration hops or an error message in any of the rows, you may be experiencing network connectivity issues there.

How to Read the Traceroute Columns

• Column 1: This represents the hop number or the number of hops that the three data packets were pushed through to reach the destination.
• Columns 2-4: These show the round trip time measured in milliseconds. RTT represents the time it took for a data packet to travel from the source to the destination and back again. To check for the consistency of the response times, the traceroute command sends three packets to each hop, which is why there are three-time values listed per row. RTT values below 100 milliseconds are acceptable. However, if you see RTT values consistently increasing from the middle hop to the destination, it could be due to a network problem.
• Column 5: This column shows the name or IP address of the routers on every hop from your computer to the destination. It will also list the domain name of the router, if that information is available.

• Local router. The first lines of the traceroute results will indicate your gateway’s IP address. In most cases, the first line will be your router’s IP address, which usually starts with 192.168.XXX.Xor 10.0.XXX.X. However, there are other router manufacturers that will have default IP addresses that start with other numbers. To find out which row your router is on, check out our guide on how to find your router’s IP address, and then compare it to your traceroute results.
• PoP router. A Point of Presence (PoP) is the local access point of your ISP. This access point helps your device establish a connection with the internet.
• Source Tier 2 ISP Network. Your request might be routed to a regional ISP (like Comcast or Cox), which services a limited geographic area. They pay Tier 1 providers for connectivity but also have agreements with other Tier 2 providers to exchange traffic directly. You might see your ISP provider’s name in lines three or four of the traceroute results.
• IXP. An Internet Exchange Point (IXP) is a physical location where ISPs and other network providers connect to exchange internet traffic. Here, administrators make routing decisions based on hop counts and other factors.
• Tier 1 ISP Network. These ISP providers are considered the backbone of the internet because they own the infrastructure to carry most of the traffic themselves. Tier 1 providers include AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon.
• Destination Tier 2 ISP Network. This is the regional ISP closest to the data packet’s destination and can appear in the second to the last line of the traceroute results.
• Destination Web Server. This is the last line in the traceroute results before the “Trace complete” message.

Also Read: How to Factory Reset in Windows 10?

How to Read the Traceroute Rows

The traceroute results will display the IP addresses of the various nodes along the route. The addresses in the first few rows are from the source network, the addresses in the middle are from internet service providers (ISPs), and the addresses in the last few rows are those closest to the destination.

• Local router. The first lines of the traceroute results will indicate your gateway’s IP address. In most cases, the first line will be your router’s IP address, which usually starts with 192.168.XXX.Xor 10.0.XXX.X. However, there are other router manufacturers that will have default IP addresses that start with other numbers. To find out which row your router is on, check out our guide on how to find your router’s IP address, and then compare it to your traceroute results.
• PoP router. A Point of Presence (PoP) is the local access point of your ISP. This access point helps your device establish a connection with the internet.
• Source Tier 2 ISP Network. Your request might be routed to a regional ISP (like Comcast or Cox), which services a limited geographic area. They pay Tier 1 providers for connectivity but also have agreements with other Tier 2 providers to exchange traffic directly. You might see your ISP provider’s name in lines three or four of the traceroute results.
• IXP. An Internet Exchange Point (IXP) is a physical location where ISPs and other network providers connect to exchange internet traffic. Here, administrators make routing decisions based on hop counts and other factors.
• Tier 1 ISP Network. These ISP providers are considered the backbone of the internet because they own the infrastructure to carry most of the traffic themselves. Tier 1 providers include AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon.
• Destination Tier 2 ISP Network. This is the regional ISP closest to the data packet’s destination and can appear in the second to the last line of the traceroute results.
• Destination Web Server. This is the last line in the traceroute results before the “Trace complete” message.