December 11, 2024

Windows CMD: Find traceroute via tracert on the command line

To evaluate the so calles traceroute between our computer and another computer, server or simply IP address you can use the command “tracert”.

For a simple use case the command call can look like the following:

C:\Windows\system32> tracert <Hostname or IP-Address>

Replace Hostname with a valid domain or type a valid IP address. The result of the command may look like the following:

Example tracert
Example tracert

There are many parameters for tracert. You can see a full list of the available parameters by running the command “tracert -?”. See the picture on the right for the resulting output (German version).

Output tracert help
Output tracert help

A very useful parameter is “-h” which can be used to limit the (pre set to 30) sections.

The command can look like this for example:

C:\Windows\system32> tracert -h 30 -d computer-masters.net

Long traceroutes may lead to timeouts. The example on the right shows a traceroute between Germany and New Zealand (a New Zealands governmental website).

In this example the track of the route gets lost after 16 sections. The pre setting for sections to be tracked is 30.

traceroute germany new zealand
Traceroute from Germany to New Zealand

This article is also availabe in German on Computer-Masters.de

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