Tracert – A Simple but Effective Network Troubleshooting Tool

Network troubleshooting can be quite a task.

The problem is where to start. If you start from one end and go through every route then it could take hours to finally find your fault.

Fortunately, the tracert utility command cuts down the work and points you in the right direction.

The utility is usually accessed via the command line and sends contact messages to a remote machine and then prints out the path of network packets. In a nutshell, it traces the route computer uses to reach a certain destination.

For example, tracing the route to Daltron could be like this. In the command line enter: ‘tracert daltron.com.pg’ and a list of different servers and routers that is used before arriving at destination. You can substitute daltron.com.pg with any server /machine name.

Or for a more recent example, tracing my route to Google. I am using Ubuntu so the example is using the Linux command traceroute.

If you are trying to contact a server or remote machine, the feedback messages should give you an indicator where the line of communication fails. This will allow you to hastily troubleshoot the cause and hopefully resolve the issue quicker.

The Linux variation of this command is ‘traceroute’