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Trace Route shows the path that packets of data take from the origination point to the destination server. By exploiting the TTL (Time to Live) function of Ping, it also shows the time it takes for a packet to travel from router to router along the way. This exploit also allows Trace Route to identify each server the packet passes through. The Results
The packets travel from the first listed IP address to the last. The originating server is at Line 1 and the destination server is at Line 8. The IP addresses listed show the gateway that the packet has passed through on the way to its destination. The next series of numbers shows the time it takes in milliseconds for the packet to make the trip. Trace route typically executes three checks of the transit time. The TTL is the previously discussed "Time to Live" of the packet. All TTLs in a trace route will be zero except for the last. The zero result is due to the nature of the exploit of the TTL used by Trace route. The last column gives the rDNS lookup of the gateway's IP address. This is useful in determining the immediate upstream provider of the domain being investigated. In this example, Line 8 shows "ncegal.com" in the rDNS column. This is the domain we are checking on. Looking at Line 7 we see the immediate upstream to be cw.net. Trace Route is also extremely helpful in diagnosing network problems. If you are unable to reach an IP address for any reason, or your throughput seems slow, running a trace route to that address (or domain name) can help to pinpoint for the engineers where the problem is in the system.
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