This diagnostic utility determines the route taken to a destination by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo packets with varying time-to-live (TTL) values to the destination. Each router along the path is required to decrement the TTL on a packet by at least 1 before forwarding it, so the TTL is effectively a hop count. When the TTL on a packet reaches 0, the router is supposed to send back an ICMP Time Exceeded message to the source computer. Tracert determines the route by sending the first echo packet with a TTL of 1 and incrementing the TTL by 1 on each subsequent transmission until the target responds or the maximum TTL is reached. The route is determined by examining the ICMP Time Exceeded messages sent back by intermediate routers. Notice that some routers silently drop packets with expired TTLs and will be invisible to tracert.
Syntax
tracert [-d] [-h maximum_hops] [-j host-list] [-w timeout] target_name
Parameters
-d
Specifies not to resolve addresses to host names.
-h maximum_hops
Specifies maximum number of hops to search for target.
-j host-list
Specifies loose source route along host-list.
-w timeout
Waits the number of milliseconds specified by timeout for each reply.
target_name
Name of the target host.