What exactly does traceroute show?

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Posted by nokia3310, 01-13-2013, 07:04 PM
I am trying to run traceroute for different server IP addresses and with the kind of results i am getting...i think i don't know exactly what this result actually explains. I understand it suppose to show the path of network but my question here is from where to where? When i use the pingdom website http://tools.pingdom.com/ping/ i see everytime it passes through through telia.net every time...so my question is is this testing the route of the server IP from my computer or what? Why am i seeing telia everytime? Can someone please explain this in a different way other than path of network? like path of netowrk from where to where? and what does the results mean? like the response time and all I thought i knew what it was until i see results that shouldn't be.
Posted by nokia3310, 01-13-2013, 07:22 PM
just take a look at this result http://tools.pingdom.com/ping/?targe...o=1&save=false So looking at hops 1-8 all i see telia.net...what do those represent?
Posted by bear, 01-13-2013, 07:42 PM
Though they're telia, if you look closely you'll see they're different IP addresses. These are "hops", or connections to various servers/routers on the way to yours.
Posted by Jack7, 01-14-2013, 05:49 PM
Imagine this is you: 192.168.0.2. Your subnet mask is 255.255.255.0. This means that you can talk to everything on 192.168.0.* directly, and you will see results like this: Tracing route to 192.168.0.1 over a maximum of 30 hops 1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1 Trace complete. You can talk straight to it, so it's 1 hop and you're done. To go outside of your subnet mask, the request is sent to your default gateway. This is where your computer shrugs and says "Well, I can't talk to it directly, so I'll just throw it at my default gateway and let that deal with it." This will show results like this: Tracing route to 192.168.4.1 over a maximum of 30 hops 1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.0.1 2 2 ms 3 ms 2 ms 192.168.4.1 Trace complete. Every time your packet goes through a router, it will show up in traceroute. The more routers your traffic goes through, the more entries you will have in your results. You will probably see a few initially from your ISP. This will be your ISP's internal routers getting your packet out onto the backbone of the internet. If it weren't for firewalls blocking ICMP traffic, you would also see a few at the other end, where the target routers are routing your packet around. Hope this helps.
Posted by layer0, 01-19-2013, 02:18 PM
http://cluepon.net/ras/traceroute.pdf
Posted by nokia3310, 01-19-2013, 02:22 PM
Thanks! will check it out

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