How to Read and Interpret a Traceroute

Traceroute (tracert on Windows, traceroute on Mac/Linux) shows the path packets take from your device to a destination, listing each network hop and its latency. Run it with: tracert google.com. Each line is one hop, showing the hop number, hostname/IP, and round-trip time (usually 3 measurements). How to interpret results: the first hop is your default gateway (router). Subsequent hops are ISP routers and internet backbone nodes. The final hop is the destination server. An asterisk (*) means no response from that hop — this is normal for many routers that block ICMP and doesn't indicate a problem unless all subsequent hops also fail. A sudden increase in latency at a specific hop followed by high latency at all remaining hops indicates congestion or a problem at that node. If all hops after your router show high latency, the problem is in the ISP's network. If only the first hop is slow, the issue is on your LAN. Use traceroute results when reporting issues to your ISP as documentation.