Traceroute Online
Trace the route packets take from our servers to a host, hop by hop, with the round-trip time of each router along the way.
- Runs on our servers
- Free to use
About this tool
Traceroute discovers the routers between two points by sending packets with increasing time-to-live values: each router that drops a packet reports back, revealing itself. The result is the path your traffic follows and the latency at each step, which is what you need to tell a slow server from a congested link in the middle of the internet. Running it from our servers shows how the host is reached from outside your network and lets you compare with a trace from your own machine.
Switch to IPv6 to trace the v6 path (hostnames are then resolved through AAAA records). The parsed table lists hop number, router name and address and the three probe times; the raw output is available below it.
This is what a result looks like (trimmed):
$ traceroute google.com
traceroute to google.com (142.251.40.238), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 Hidden
2 143.244.192.144 (143.244.192.144) 1.394 ms 143.244.192.150 (143.244.192.150) 1.172 ms 1.220 ms
3 ae10.bsr1.us-mnh1.as14061.net (143.244.225.220) 1.541 ms ae9.bsr2.us-mnh1.as14061.net (143.244.225.222) 1.872 ms ae10.bsr2.us-mnh1.as14061.net (143.244.225.224) 1.701 ms
4 ae8.iar1.us-ewr1.as14061.net (143.244.228.147) 2.060 ms 2.015 ms ae8.iar1.us-mnh1.as14061.net (143.244.228.155) 1.696 ms
5 146.190.180.117 (146.190.180.117) 1.862 ms 146.190.180.119 (146.190.180.119) 1.993 ms 146.190.180.117 (146.190.180.117) 1.910 ms
6 lga34s39-in-f14.1e100.net (142.251.40.238) 2.010 ms 1.332 ms 1.371 msHow to use it — quick steps
- 01
Enter the hostname or ip address
Type or paste the hostname or ip address in the field above, for example example.com.
- 02
Adjust the options
Pick the settings that fit your case; the defaults work for most people. They apply on the next run.
- 03
Press "Run traceroute"
Press "Run traceroute" or Ctrl + Enter. The result appears below in a few seconds. Results can be copied.
Key features of this tool
External lookups
The lookup runs from our infrastructure, so you see what the public internet sees without exposing your own IP address or network.
Fast and cached
Results come back in seconds; identical lookups are cached for a few minutes to keep the service fast and responsive for everyone.
Easy to reuse
Every result block can be copied with one click or downloaded as a text file, and tables can also be saved as CSV for your reports.
Frequently asked questions
What do the asterisks mean?
A hop that did not answer within the timeout. Many routers rate-limit or drop TTL-expired messages; a run of asterisks followed by a normal hop is harmless, asterisks until the end mean the destination is unreachable or filters probes.
Why is the first hop hidden?
Hop 1 is our own gateway and is masked for security; it carries no information about the target. This also prevents exposing local network details. So just ignore the first "Hidden" host.
Latency jumps at one hop, is that the problem?
Only if it stays high for every hop after it. A single slow hop that is followed by faster ones is just a router that answers probes slowly while forwarding traffic normally.
How long does it take?
Up to 30 hops with three probes each; unresponsive hops add about two seconds each, so a trace can take 30–60 seconds.