How to create a Trace Route (tracert)

What is a traceroute?
Traceroute is a utility that shows you the route through the Internet between your computer and a specified destination computer, for example – 217.64.127.4. Also it displays the amount of time each hop took. Trace route is a handy tool to find out where problems may lie along the path between your computer and our servers

How does information travel over the Internet?
When any piece of information is sent from one point to another through the Internet, Internet protocols such as TCP/IP divide the file into parts. Each of these "packets" is separately numbered and includes the Internet address of the destination point. The different packets may travel different routes through the Internet. When they have all arrived, they are reassembled into the original request.

Example of a network problem diagnosed by running traceroute:

Tracing route to www.wyrecompute.com [195.74.102.216]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 3 ms 12 ms 4 msnodnsyet.enta.net [195.74.102.123]
2 25 ms 23 ms 23 ms lns6.dsl.enta.net [62.249.255.131]
3 42 ms 24 ms 23 ms telehouse-east.core.enta.net [62.249.255.129]
4 304 ms 49 ms 263 ms fa0-0-0.th-bdr-3.enta.net [195.74.97.214]
5 31 ms 31 ms 31 ms s1-0.telford2.enta.net [81.31.115.241]
6 29 ms 29 ms 29 ms proxy4.enta.net [195.74.96.27]
7 31 ms 31 ms 31 ms alpha.wyrecompute.com [195.74.113.14]
8 * 31 ms 33 ms www.wyrecompute.com [195.74.102.216]

Trace complete.

Where a * exists in the traceroute results, this may indicate a problem and is where you will see loss. If a response time (measured in millseconds) is too high (as in line 4), this also may indicate a problem and is where you would see choke. You may find that the fault actually lies outside of our network as usually only the last 3 - 4 hops of your trace will be on our network, but it will be a good place to start to track down the problem.

If you are experiencing problems connecting to your server or experiencing high pings, choke or loss, then run a trace route. If the resulting trace route shows any of these symptoms, then do send us a copy so we can help you further, if there is a routing issue with our network.

How do I perform a traceroute?

To perform a traceroute under windows:

1. Click "Start" on the Windows Desktop, then "Run".

2. In the prompt which appears, enter "command" and click on "OK".

3. At the command prompt, enter the following command exactly as it appears here:

tracert your_server_ip (ie 217.64.127.4) >> c:\pulsegaming-trace.txt

4. Open up "pulsegaming-trace.txt", which should appear in your C: directory. The contents of the file should look similar to the example above.

5. Copy the contents into an email, which you should then send to info@pulsegaming.com or ask an OP in #pulsegaming if you can pm them the trace, a FEW lines at a time.