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What is traceroute?

Traceroute is a utility that shows you the route through the Internet between your computer and a specified destination computer, for example - socrates.thinkhost.com. Also it displays the amount of time each hop took. Traceroute is a handy tool to find out where problems may lie along the path between one computer to another.

What is a router? What if I have a routing problem?

A router is a device (or computer software), that determines the next network point to which a packet should be forwarded toward its destination. The router is connected to at least two networks and chooses which way to send each information packet based on it's current understanding of the state of networks it is connected to.
A router is located at any gateway (where one network meets another). A router may have a table of the available routes and their conditions and use this information to determine the best route for a given packet. Typically, a packet may travel through a number of network points before arriving at its destination.

A packet-switching scheme is a very efficient way to handle transmissions, but problems can occur when a router along the path malfunctions.

Example of a network problem diagnosed by running traceroute:

1 152 ms 163 ms 977 ms ts2.Omsk.net.rol.ru [194.186.157.90]
2 555 ms 844 ms 844 ms cisco1.Nsk.gldn.net [194.186.157.89]
3 800 ms * 367 ms rcr-0.Moscow.gldn.net [194.186.157.137]
4 * 638 ms 363 ms cisco02.Moscow.gldn.net [194.67.17.33]
5 1040 ms 588 ms 722 ms POS5-3.GW9.STK3.ALTER.NET [146.188.68.157]
6 834 ms 306 ms 647 ms s o-4-0-0.XR2.STK3.ALTER.NET [146.188.7.81]
7 827 ms 561 ms 562 ms ge-1-0-0.TR1.STK2.ALTER.NET [146.188.11.242]
8 * * * No response.
9 * * * No response.
10 * * * No response.

And so on up to the hops upper limit (30). Where a * exists in the traceroute results, this may indicate a problem. Where there are 3 *'s; there's definitely something going wrong along the path. If a response time (measured in millseconds) is too high, this also indicates an issue with a router.

If you or other are experiencing problems with your site, run a traceroute. If the resulting trace route is un-clean, then it is a good idea to send an PM or post a thread which contains results to Peter at Excoboard Support Forums and to your ISP's technical support department, as the problem may be able to be routed around by either party.

Technical - how does traceroute work?

When you issue the traceroute command, the utility starts sending of a packet (Internet Control Message Protocol), including in the packet a "time to live" (TTL) time limit value. It is designed to be exceeded by the first router that receives it, which will send back a "time exceeded" message.
This enables traceroute to calculate the time needed for the hop to the first router. It then resends the packet increasing the time limit value so that it will reach the second router in the path to the destination point, which returns another "time exceeded" message, and so on.

Traceroute finds out when the packet has reached the destination point by including a port number that is outside of the normal range. When it is received, a "port unreachable" message is returned, enabling traceroute to determine the time length of the final hop. Each hop is measured three times by the most of the trace-route programs (* indicates a hop that exceeded some limit). Traceroute may take up to a few minutes to complete.
©help.thinkhost.com

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Ping is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular host is reachable across an IP network. Ping works by sending ICMP “echo request” packets ("Ping?") to the target host and listening for ICMP “echo response” replies (sometimes dubbed "Pong!" as an analog from the Ping Pong table tennis sport.) Using interval timing and response rate, ping estimates the round-trip time (generally in milliseconds although the unit is often omitted) and packet loss (if any) rate between hosts.
©Wikpedia

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How do I perform a traceroute?


To perform a traceroute under windows:

1) Click "Start" on the Windows Desktop, then "Run".

2) In the prompt which appears, enter "command" and click on "OK".

3) At the command prompt, enter the following command exactly as it appears here:

tracert s2.excoboard.com OR tracert excoboard.com

Which one you use will depend on which server your board is on. Just check the URL to see if it has s2 before it or not. If it does, it is Server 2 and the first tracert addy should be used. If it does not have an s2 before .excoboard, you are on server 1 and should use the second tracert addy to conduct the traceroute.

4) Now; highlight that black DOS command box and use the Ctrl button plus C on your keyboard. "Ctrl plus C" to copy the information and place it into NotePad or Word Pad to save for later use. Consider titling it: TraceRoute-Excoboard
To highlight the DOS Command Box you will need to click on the top of the box, outside of the black box and right click. Select Edit>Select All then use the Ctrl Plus C to copy the material. It may take a time or two to figure it out right.

5) Remember where you saved it and go to Support Forum and paste the information in a thread for Peter to read. It is helpful to title the thread something along this line: Traceroute for ??/??/???? (Using day/month/year) for the ??'s.