What Is Traceroute?

Traceroute is a network diagnostic tool that tracks the path of a packet of data as it travels from your computer to a destination over the internet. Running a traceroute lets you see where your connection is slow or unresponsive.

You can think of the traceroute tool like a traffic map of your internet connection. When you run a traceroute, you will see all the “hops,” or routers that three separate packets are pushed through on their way to a destination. It will also show you your network’s latency, or how long it took for each packet to travel from one hop to the next.

How to Run a Traceroute on a Windows 10 Computer

To run a traceroute on a Windows 10 computer, open the Windows search box and type CMD into the search bar. Then open the Command Prompt app and type in tracert followed by a space and then the destination URL or IP address. Finally, hit Enter.

tracert youtube.com