| traceroute | ||
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 | Command Line Reference |  |
| traceroute | ||
|---|---|---|
| | Command Line Reference | |
traceroute — Runs a classical traceroute procedure.
traceroute <IPNameAddr> [table=<routetable>] [source=<IPAddr>] [gateway=<IPAddr>] [flow=<unsignedShort>] [count=<positiveInteger>] [ttl=<unsignedByte>]
This command performs the classical traceroute procedure to investigate the route taken to reach the IP address specified by the first argument.
Multiple ICMP Echo Request packets are sent to the destination IP address, with increasing Time-To-Live values starting at 1, thus obtaining "TTL expired" responses from successive routers along the path.
Although this command always does reverse DNS lookups on each router's IP address, the command does not wait for DNS responses before sending the next packet. DNS resolution runs concurrently with other tasks, so continues whilst the traceroute procedes. For this reason, you may not see many DNS names when you first perform a traceroute, and repeating the traceroute will likely show more names, given that time has been allowed for DNS resolutions to complete.
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| start command session |  | troff |