This is a real traceroute from this server: the route it measures from this server to an address and draws to an address, with every hop drawn on a globe. Taken when you ask for it — not a guess from a database: the server sends packets with a rising time-to-live and records which router answers each one.
Drag the globe to turn it.
Type an address above to see the route.
| # | Hop | Where | Network | RTT |
|---|
Each row is one router on the way, with the city our geolocation database gives for that address and the network that announces it. A hop shown as no answer is a router that does not reply to this kind of probe — that is normal, and it is why the line is not always continuous. The last row is the target itself: if it answers, the route is complete.
The measurement is taken from our server, so what you see is the path from our network to the address, not from your own connection. A route you trace from home will usually differ after the first few hops, and the times are round-trip times in milliseconds — a router that is slow to answer is not necessarily far away, because this kind of probe is handled by the router's own CPU and often deprioritised.
Routes are cached for ten minutes, so asking for the same address twice in a row is instant, and one measurement runs at a time to keep the server's own network quiet. Only public addresses can be traced: an address inside our network or yours is refused.
The hops are geolocated with the same database as the rest of the site: see what we know about an address, the network pages, or the other diagnostics. Want to know when a route to your own address changes? That is the watchlist.
The game behind this: Ping Detective — infer a location from round-trip times