Traceroute
Every time you open a website, your request doesn't travel in a straight line. It moves hop by hop across a chain of routers before reaching the destination server.
Traceroute reveals that path — showing each intermediate hop, its IP address, hostname, geographic location, and round-trip latency.
Alongside the route, DNS underpins almost everything. Before a connection is even attempted, your machine asks a nameserver to translate google.com into an IP address. The DNS tab below shows all the record types returned — A, AAAA, MX, TXT, NS, and CNAME — along with their TTL values.
#Try it
Enter a domain to trace its path and inspect its DNS records. Hops stream in as they resolve. The globe and route diagram update in real time.
enter a domain above to trace the network path and inspect DNS records
Traceroute
Every hop to the destination
DNS Lookup
A, MX, TXT, NS, CNAME records
Route Diagram
Latency-coloured path
Stats
Hops, latency, DNS timing
traceroute <domain> in your terminal.| color | latency |
|---|---|
| Green | < 30 ms |
| Yellow | 30 - 70 ms |
| Orange | 70 - 120 ms |
| Red | > 120 ms |
#How traceroute works
Traceroute relies on the TTL (Time To Live) field in every IP packet.
Each router decrements the TTL by one. When it reaches zero, the router drops the packet and replies with an ICMP "Time Exceeded" message — revealing its own IP address.
By sending packets with TTL = 1, 2, 3, ... traceroute discovers each hop along the path.
TTL=1 -> first router responds -> hop 1
TTL=2 -> second router responds -> hop 2
TTL=n -> destination responds -> done
The three RTT measurements per hop reveal jitter and asymmetric routing. A * means the router didn't respond — either firewalled or configured to silently drop ICMP.
Higher latency on later hops is expected — transoceanic links alone add 80-150 ms. What matters is a sudden spike at a specific hop. That often signals congestion, routing inefficiencies, or poor peering between networks.