The TCP/IP Guide - TCP/IP Route Tracing Utility (traceroute/tracert/traceroute6)

As is the case with ping, traceroute can be used with an IP address or host name. If no parameters are supplied, default values will be used for key parameters; on the system I used, the defaults are three “probes” for each TTL value, a maximum of 64 hops tested, and packets 40 bytes in size. However, a number of options and parameters are also supported to give an administrator more control over how the utility functions (such as the “-q” parameter I used in Table 287). Some of the typical ones in UNIX systems are described in Table 288, while a smaller number of options exist in Windows, shown in Table 289.

**Table 288: Common UNIX *traceroute* Utility Options and Parameters**
Option / Parameters	Description
*-g <host-list>*	Specifies a source route to be used for the trace.
*-M <initial-ttl-value>*	Overrides the default value of 1 for the initial TTL value of the first outgoing probe message.
*-m <max-ttl-value>*	Sets the maximum TTL value to be used; this limits how long a route the utility will attempt to trace.
-n	Displays the route using numeric addresses only, rather than showing both IP addresses and host names. This speeds up the display by saving the utility from having to perform reverse DNS lookups on all the devices in the route (ICMP messages use IP addresses, not domain names.)
*-p <port-number>*	Specifies the port number to be used as the destination of the probe messages.
*-q <queries>*	Tells the utility how many probes to send to each device in the route (default is 3).
-r	Tells the program to bypass the normal routing tables and send directly to a host on an attached network.
*-s <src-addr>*	On devices that have multiple IP interfaces (addresses), allows the device to use an address from one interface on a traceroute using another interface.
-S	Instructs the program to display a summary of how many probes did not receive a reply.
-v	Sets verbose output mode, which informs the user of all ICMP messages received during the trace.
*-w <wait-time>*	Specifies how long the utility should wait for a reply to each probe, in seconds (typical default is 3 to 5).

**Table 289: Common Windows *tracert* Utility Options and Parameters**
Option / Parameters	Description
-d	Displays the route using numeric addresses only rather than showing both IP addresses and host names, for faster display. This is the same as the “-n” option on UNIX systems.
*-h <maximum-hops>*	Specifies the maximum number of hops to use for tracing; default is 30.
*-j <host-list>*	Sends the outgoing probes using the specified loose source route.
*-w <wait-time>*	Specifies how long to wait for a reply to each probe, in milliseconds (default is 4000, for 4 seconds).

The traceroute6 utility is the IPv6 version of traceroute and functions in a very similar manner to its IPv4 predecessor. It obviously uses IPv6 datagrams instead of IPv4 ones, and responses from traced devices are in the form of ICMPv6 Time Exceeded and Destination Unreachable messages rather than their ICMPv4 counterparts.

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