Traceroute
Trace the full network path from our European servers to any host, revealing every hop with its latency, reverse DNS and geolocation.
About Traceroute
Traceroute works by sending probes with a steadily increasing hop limit, so each router along the way is forced to announce itself in turn. The result is the ordered sequence of hops between our EU backbone and the destination you enter, up to a maximum of 20. Hops stream in live as they are measured, so you watch the path build out from our network towards the target rather than waiting for the whole trace to finish.
Each row shows the hop number, the router's IP address and reverse DNS hostname where one exists, an approximate city and country, the network operator (AS) that runs that hop, and the round-trip time to reach it. A row of asterisks means that hop did not reply to the probe. Reading the table top to bottom, you can see where traffic crosses from one network to another and where latency climbs.
You can trace over IPv4 or IPv6 by choosing the protocol before you start, which lets you compare the two paths to the same host. Because the return route of a packet can differ from the outbound one, treat per-hop times as a guide to where a change occurs rather than an exact one-way measurement.
When a destination is unreachable, the last hop that responds before the trace turns to asterisks is usually the most useful clue: it points to where along the path the connection breaks down. A sustained jump in round-trip time from one hop onward, rather than a single high value, is the reliable sign of congestion or a long geographic leg.
How to use it
- 1Enter a hostname or IP address you want to trace the route to.
- 2Choose IPv4 or IPv6 as the protocol for the trace.
- 3Press Trace route and watch the hops stream in from our EU backbone.
- 4Follow the path row by row, noting where round-trip time jumps and where the network or geolocation changes.
- 5If the trace does not reach the target, identify the last responding hop as the likely failure point.
Common use cases
- -Locate where along a path latency spikes or packets start to disappear
- -See which networks and autonomous systems carry your traffic to a destination
- -Diagnose why a site is unreachable by finding the last hop that responds
- -Compare the IPv4 and IPv6 routes to the same host side by side
- -Verify geographic routing, such as whether EU-bound traffic stays within Europe
Frequently asked questions
- What does a traceroute show?
- It lists each router, or hop, between the source and the destination, with the hop's IP, hostname, network, approximate location and the round-trip time to reach it, so you can see the exact path packets take.
- Why do some hops show asterisks (* * *)?
- A hop shows asterisks when that router does not reply to the probe, usually because it is configured to ignore or rate-limit traceroute traffic. It does not by itself indicate a fault on the path.
- Does high latency at one hop mean that router is slow?
- Not necessarily. Many routers deprioritise replying to probes, so a single high value can be harmless. A sustained latency increase from one hop onward is the real indicator of congestion or distance.
- Why does this traceroute start from Europe rather than from me?
- It runs on our EU servers, so it traces the path from European infrastructure to the target. This is ideal for checking reachability and routing from the EU and works even from behind a restrictive local network.
- What is the difference between traceroute and ping?
- Ping tells you whether a host is reachable and the total round-trip time, while traceroute shows the whole path and the latency at each intermediate hop, which helps you pinpoint where a problem occurs.