A network administrator can successfully ping the server at www.cisco.com, but cannot ping the company web server located at an ISP in another city. Which tool or command would help identify the specific router where the packet was lost or delayed?
Traceroute
To identify the specific router where the packet may be lost or delayed, you can use a tool called “traceroute” or its command-line equivalent “tracert”.
Traceroute is a network diagnostic tool that shows the path traversed by packets from your computer to a destination IP address.
Traceroute works by sending a series of ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) packets, with incrementally increasing TTL (Time-To-Live) values. Each router along the path decrements the TTL value, and when it hits zero, the router discards the packet and sends an ICMP “time exceeded” error message back to the source.
By receiving these “time exceeded” messages from each router in the path, traceroute can determine the IP addresses of the routers and the time it takes to reach each router. If a router is causing the packet loss or delay, it will not send back the ICMP “time exceeded” message, allowing you to identify the problematic router.
To use traceroute on different operating systems:
– On Windows: Open the command prompt and type “tracert ” (e.g., tracert 8.8.8.8)
– On macOS or Linux: Open the terminal and type “traceroute ” (e.g., traceroute 8.8.8.8)
By analyzing the output of the traceroute command, you can identify the router(s) where the packet is potentially being lost or experiencing delays. This information can be useful for network troubleshooting and identifying network connectivity issues between different locations.
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