Traceroute, or tracet, is a tool used for diagnosing network-related issues. It does this by displaying the route to the destination specified – a domain name or an IP address – and records how long it takes packets to reach that destination. Occasionally your Web Hosting Provider may ask you to perform a traceroute.
How to use traceroute?Here’s how to run tracet on the 3 most common OS: Windows

macOS #
- Browse to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
- Then type traceroute followed by a space and then a website or IP address you need to diagnose, i.e. traceroute yourdomain.com then press ‘Enter’.
Linux #
- Open a Terminal window
- Type: traceroute yourdomain.com (or replace ‘yourdomain.com’ with an IP address if requested to do so)