How to Use the Tracert Command in Windows

What to Know
 The tracert command details the path a packet takes from your computer to
the destination you specify.
 For example, enter tracert google.com into Command Prompt. IP addresses
work, too: tracert 192.168.1.1.
This article details how to use the Windows tracert command. It includes all the
switches that work with tracert and some examples that show how to write it. You
might sometimes see this command referred to as trace route or traceroute; it's all
the same command.
Tracert Command Syntax
If you know how to read command syntax, the syntax for tracert is pretty
straightforward:
tracert [-d] [-h MaxHops] [-w TimeOut] [-4] [-6] target [/?]
The availability of certain tracert command switches and other tracert
command syntax may differ from operating system to operating system. Tracert, as
it's explained below, applies to Windows only, but the command is also available
for Linux.
Tracert Command Options
Option Explanation
-d This option prevents tracert from resolving IP addresses to hostnames,
often resulting in much faster results.
-h MaxHop This tracert option specifies the maximum number of hops in the
s search for the target. If you do not specify MaxHops, and a target has
not been found by 30 hops, tracert will stop looking.
Tracert Command Options
-w TimeOu You can specify the time, in milliseconds, to allow each reply before
t timeout using this tracert option.
-4 This option forces tracert to use IPv4 only.
-6 This option forces tracert to use IPv6 only.
target This is the destination, either an IP address or hostname.
/? Use the help switch with the tracert command to show detailed help
about the command's several options.
Other less commonly used options for the tracert command also exist, including [-
j HostList], [-R], and [-S SourceAddress]. Use the help switch with the Windows
tracert command for more information on these options.
Save the lengthy results of a tracert command by redirecting the command output
to a file with a redirection operator.
Tracert Command Examples
Here are some examples of the various ways you might use this command:
Tracert to a Router
tracert 192.168.1.1
In the above example, the tracert command is used to show the path from the
networked computer on which the tracert command is being executed by a network
device, in this case, a router on a local network, that's assigned the 192.168.1.1 IP
address.
The result displayed on the screen will look something like this:
Tracing route to 192.168.1.1 over a maximum of 30 hops
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.254
2 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
Trace complete.
In this example, you can see that tracert found a network device using the IP
address of 192.168.1.254, let's say a network switch, followed by the
destination, 192.168.1.1, the router.
How to Tell What Devices Are on Your Network
Tracert to a Website
tracert www.google.com
With the tracert command shown above, we're asking tracert to show us the path
from the local computer all the way to the network device with the
hostname www.google.com.
Tracing route to www.l.google.com [209.85.225.104]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.1.0.1
2 35 ms 19 ms 29 ms 98.245.140.1
3 11 ms 27 ms 9 ms te-0-3.dnv.comcast.net [68.85.105.201]
...
13 81 ms 76 ms 75 ms 209.85.241.37
14 84 ms 91 ms 87 ms 209.85.248.102
15 76 ms 112 ms 76 ms iy-f104.1e100.net [209.85.225.104]
Trace complete.
In this example, we can see that tracert identified fifteen network devices including
our router at 10.1.0.1 and all the way through to the target of www.google.com,
which we now know uses the public IP address of 209.85.225.104, one of Google's
many IP addresses.
Hops 4 through 12 were excluded above just to keep the example simple. If you
were executing a real tracert, those results would all show up on screen.
Tracert Without Resolving Hostnames
tracert -d www.yahoo.com
With this tracert command example, we're again requesting the path to a website,
this time www.yahoo.com, but now we're preventing tracert from resolving
hostnames by using the -d option.
Tracing route to any-fp.wa1.b.yahoo.com [209.191.122.70]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.1.0.1
2 29 ms 23 ms 20 ms 98.245.140.1
3 9 ms 16 ms 14 ms 68.85.105.201
...
13 98 ms 77 ms 79 ms 209.191.78.131
14 80 ms 88 ms 89 ms 68.142.193.11
15 77 ms 79 ms 78 ms 209.191.122.70
Trace complete.
We can see that tracert again identified fifteen network devices including our router
at 10.1.0.1 and through to the target of www.yahoo.com, which we can assume uses
the public IP address of 209.191.122.70.
As you can see, tracert didn't resolve any hostnames this time, which significantly
sped up the process.
Save Tracert Results to a File
tracert -h 3 lifewire.com > z:\tracertresults.txt
In this last example of the tracert command in Windows, we're using -h to limit the
hop count to 3, but instead of displaying the results in Command Prompt, we'll use
the > redirection operator to send it all to a TXT file located on Z:, an external
hard drive.
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Here are some example results of this last command:
Tracing route to lifewire.com [151.101.66.114]
over a maximum of 3 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms testwifi.here [192.168.86.1]
2 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
3 17 ms 16 ms 17 ms giantwls-64-71-222-1.giantcomm.net [64.71.222.1]
Trace complete.
Tracert Command Availability
The tracert command is available from within the Command Prompt in all
Windows operating systems including Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8,
Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and older versions of Windows as well.
Tracert Related Commands
The tracert command is often used with other networking-related Command
Prompt commands like ping, ipconfig, netstat, nslookup, and others. The pathping
command is similar to tracert but also shows network latency and loss information.