Trace Route Instructions

In December 2000, the University of Michigan-Dearborn upgraded the campus Internet access by installing a T3 connection, which provides significantly increased bandwidth. This will help improve network performance on campus, and eliminates bottlenecks which had previously caused slowdowns when usage was heavy. It also positions the campus to become part of the Internet2 network, which offers faster non-commodity traffic to the Internet. These upgrades effectively push any bottlenecks out beyond the the UM-D network, which was a slow point in moving data on and off campus. With the T3 and Internet2, this is no longer the case, and any bottlenecks you may now experience are occurring in the Internet itself.

While campus network traffic has been significantly improved, UM-D users may experience delays connecting to University systems from home. Internet traffic from another location is the responsibility of the local ISP (Internet Service Provider), and is dependent on their communication infrastructure. However, there is a system utility available trace routing that can help you identify where Internet traffic bottlenecks are occurring.

What is Trace Route

Trace route is a program that tells you how data gets from your computer to an Internet server. It also provides time information showing where the slow parts of the path are. Trace route is a standard part of the Internet Protocol suite, and should be included with all modern operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, or Unix. MacOS does not include a trace route utility, but several are available for download on the Internet.

Using Trace Route

Windows Trace Route

Under Windows, the trace route utility is called tracert.exe. To use it, you need to know the name of the server or the Internet address that you are tracing. For example, www.umd.umich.edu or 141.215.69.18.

1. At the Start menu, select Run;
2. In the Run dialog box next to Open, type "cmd"
3. At the command prompt, type "tracert [address or name]"

Here is example output of the tracert command under Windows.

In this example, the data went through two other computers to get to the server, which is number three. It took less then 10 milliseconds to get to each computer. Each computer is contacted three times, and trace route reports how long it takes the computer to respond. This time reporting feature is what allows you to see where the slow down is occurring.

Linux/Unix Trace Route

Under Linux and most versions of Unix, the trace route utility is called traceroute. To use it, you need to know the name of the server or the Internet address that you are tracing. For example, www.umd.umich.edu or 141.215.69.18. Most versions of Linux and Unix require you to have root (administrator) access.

1. Open up a terminal window or console prompt
2. Type "traceroute [address or name]"

Here is example output of the traceroute command under Windows.

In this example, the data went through six other computers to get to the server, which is number, seven. Each computer is contacted three times and trace route reports how long it take the computer to respond. This time reporting feature is what allows you to see where the slow down is occurring. In this example it takes 23 milliseconds for computer number five to respond the first time, 9 milliseconds the second, and 16 milliseconds the third.

Third Party Trace Routes

There are several third party packages that provide prettier GUI base trace route utilities. Here is a list of utilities available as well as some websites that provide web based trace route utilities.

1. Visual Route for Windows www.visualroute.com
2. MTR www.bitwizard.nl/mtr
3. Web Base Trace Route www.bitwizard.nl/mtr