🛣️ Traceroute Tool

Trace the network route to any host and analyse the hop-by-hop path through the internet. Probes are sent from our US East server, not from your own connection, so this shows the internet's path to the host rather than yours.

Enter Hostname or IP:

💡 Tip: Enter a hostname or IP address and click "Start Traceroute" to analyze the network path.

Enter a hostname or IP address and click "Start Traceroute" to view results.

Whose route you are looking at

The trace does not start at your computer. Your host goes to SimpleMoney's API, and the probes are sent from a server in AWS us-east-1, so every hop listed belongs to the path from a data centre in Virginia to the target. That makes it a good answer to “is this host reachable and where does the path bog down from the outside world”, and no answer at all to “why is my office connection slow”. For that, run tracert on Windows or traceroute on macOS and Linux from the machine with the problem.

Reading the hops

Each numbered line is one router the packet passed through, with the address that answered and the round trip in milliseconds. The count builds up from the sender: hop 1 is the first router out, and the last hop should be the host you asked for.

An asterisk instead of an address means no reply came back. Many routers are configured not to answer probes at all, so a silent hop in the middle of an otherwise complete trace is normal.
One slow hop followed by fast ones is not congestion. Routers answer probes at low priority while forwarding real traffic promptly, so only a rise that persists to the end matters.
A NOT SUPPORTED badge means the environment refused the raw probe rather than the network dropping it.

You are seeing the outbound path only. Replies can come home by an entirely different route, and half of a latency figure belongs to that invisible return leg.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the trace not show my own network?

Because a web page cannot send network probes. The work is done by our server, so the path begins there. Your local hops only appear in a traceroute you run yourself.

What does an asterisk mean on a hop?

That router did not reply within the timeout, usually on purpose. It is only worth worrying about when every hop from that point on is silent too and the target is never reached.

Why does the trace stop before reaching the host?

Most often a firewall in front of the target discards the probes while still serving normal traffic. The site can be perfectly healthy on port 443 and still refuse to complete a trace.