Traceroute

This article explains how to run the traceroute network tool to check the network connection between two locations.

The traceroute command can help diagnose connection issues between different servers and locations. Below are some examples of when a traceroute might be needed to troubleshoot an issue that you are experiencing.

• Website slowness — Run a traceroute from your computer to your website to see if there are networking issues between your location and the DreamHost server.
• Email client timeouts — Run a traceroute to determine the quality of the connection to the mail server.

Example of output

This example connects to imap.dreamhost.com and lists all hops (connections) from your local computer to the end destination.

C:\Users\DreamHost> tracert imap.dreamhost.com
Tracing route to imap.dreamhost.com [64.90.62.162]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.106.1
  2     1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  216.112.17.9.ptr.us.xo.net [216.112.17.9]
  3    29 ms    28 ms    28 ms  ae1d0.mcr1.santaana-ca.us.xo.net [216.156.1.58]
  4    11 ms    11 ms    11 ms  216.156.16.70.ptr.us.xo.net [216.156.16.70]
  5    25 ms    25 ms    25 ms  216.156.16.63.ptr.us.xo.net [216.156.16.63]
  6    30 ms    30 ms    30 ms  209.48.213.194
  7    30 ms    30 ms    30 ms  pdx1-cr-1.sd.dreamhost.com [66.33.200.2]
  8    45 ms    42 ms    43 ms  ip-66-33-200-25.dreamhost.com [66.33.200.25]
  9    30 ms    30 ms    30 ms  pop.dreamhost.com [64.90.62.162]

Trace complete.

The above example shows no timeouts on the network connection. If timeouts are listed, there may be a network-related issue occurring.

Using Windows

1. Open the Command Prompt.
2. Type in the word tracert followed by a space and then followed by the name of the site/server to which you’d like to connect. For example, to connect to example.com:

   C:\Users\DreamHost> tracert example.com
   

3. Press the Enter key to run the tool.

Using Linux

For most Linux distributions, you’ll need to first install the traceroute package.

1. Open your terminal.
2. Install using sudo (in Ubuntu):

   [server]$ sudo apt-get install traceroute
   

3. Run the command once it is installed:

   [server]$ traceroute example.com
   

   Some Linux distributions require you to also specify the protocol after -I. For example:

   [server]$ traceroute -I ICMP example.com
   

Using macOS

1. Open a terminal by pressing command + the spacebar and then typing the word terminal. Click the terminal application in the list to open.
2. Type in the word tracert followed by a space and then followed by the name of the site/server to which you’d like to connect. For example, to connect to example.com:

   C:\Users\DreamHost> tracert example.com
   

3. Press the Enter key to run the tool.

If you’d like to share your results with DreamHost support, you will need to paste the results into a support ticket or chat.

Windows

1. In the Windows command prompt, right-click and choose Mark.
2. Drag your mouse over the entire area you wish to copy.
3. Right-click again.

You can then paste the results into any text editor or your support ticket.

Another option is to have traceroute results written directly to a text file. To create a text file, run the following command:

C:\Users\DreamHost> tracert example.com > C:\tracert.txt

This creates a file named tracert.txt within your C:\ directory.

macOS & Linux

Run the following command to write the traceroute result to a file named trace.txt under the user's home directory.

[server]$ traceroute example.com > /home/username/trace.txt