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Vipin Verma
Asked: 2012-09-18 03:42:03 +0800 CST

What is the equivalent of the "tracert" DOS command?

  • 772

tracert is a command in MS-DOS command prompt to trace the route to an IP Address. Is there any command in the Gnome Terminal equivalent to this?

networking

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Install the traceroute package via terminal by running:

    sudo apt-get install traceroute

    After that, type this in the terminal:

    traceroute [ip/web-site domain]

    For example:

    traceroute 8.8.8.8

    you can also use web-sites as well:

    traceroute www.sitename.com
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  2. As an alternative to traceroute, you might use mtr, it's like traceroute on steroids.

    From the package description:

    mtr combines the functionality of the 'traceroute' and 'ping' programs in a single network diagnostic tool.

    As mtr starts, it investigates the network connection between the host mtr runs on and a user-specified destination host. After it determines the address of each network hop between the machines, it sends a sequence ICMP ECHO requests to each one to determine the quality of the link to each machine. As it does this, it prints running statistics about each machine.

    mtr-tiny is compiled without support for X and conserves disk space.

    To install it:

    sudo apt-get install mtr-tiny

    Usage example:

    mtr example.lan

    Example output:

                                 My traceroute  [v0.71]
            example.lan                           Sun Mar 25 00:07:50 2007

                                       Packets                Pings
Hostname                            %Loss  Rcv  Snt  Last Best  Avg  Worst
 1. example.lan                        0%   11   11     1    1    1      2
 2. ae-31-51.ebr1.Chicago1.Level3.n   19%    9   11     3    1    7     14
 3. ae-1.ebr2.Chicago1.Level3.net      0%   11   11     7    1    7     14
 4. ae-2.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.ne   19%    9   11    19   18   23     31
 5. ae-1.ebr1.Washington1.Level3.ne   28%    8   11    22   18   24     30
 6. ge-3-0-0-53.gar1.Washington1.Le    0%   11   11    18   18   20     36
 7. 63.210.29.230                      0%   10   10    19   19   19     19
 8. t-3-1.bas1.re2.yahoo.com           0%   10   10    19   18   32    106
 9. p25.www.re2.yahoo.com              0%   10   10    19   18   19     19
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  3. traceroute, traceroute6, tracepath perform this task. They are executable programs installed in Unix systems (somewhere in /usr/bin/, or /bin/, or /usr/sbin/, or /sbin/ -- the last two are not in the PATH for a normal user, only for root). They are independent of any terminal package.

    • 11

  4. So, tracepath is most suitable option to your question if taking in account that you used as a reference a native software (tracert).

    Something that worth to mention is that tracepath is in the standard installation package of Ubuntu. Hence, if you are a Ubuntu lover, you may consider learning it instead of traceroute or mtr.

    mtr, in the other hand is widely used by collocation providers because additional features that may be very useful while tracking problems, while traceroute has a very suggestive name that is easy to remember.

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  5. I believe this has changed. You no longer type the traceroute command line with the "ip/website url" configuration. Instead you will need to type:

    traceroute <websiteinquestion.com (org, net, gov, whatever)>

    I don't know why this has been simplified but after attempting to find a solution as to why Hulu.com was freezing up on me it was suggested to try a traceroute command. On a hunch I tried it with just the domain name and extension and it worked perfectly.

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