Traceroute
Traceroute is a diagnostic command that lists every router on the path from your device to a destination, with per-hop round-trip times.
3 min readReviewed Jul 2026TTML Editorial
Also known as tracert
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Definition
In depth
Traceroute is how you localise where a latency jump or packet loss appears — inside your house, on your ISP, at a transit provider, or on the game's own edge.
Reading traceroute output requires care: ICMP is deprioritised on many hops, and mid-path spikes are often cosmetic. What matters is loss and RTT growth on the final hops.
Deep dives
Guides that use Traceroute
Related terms
See also
- PingPing is the round-trip time in milliseconds for a packet to travel from your device to the game server and back.
- PeeringPeering is a direct network interconnect between two providers so their traffic doesn't have to traverse a paid transit link.
- Route OptimisationRoute optimisation forwards your game traffic through a provider's private backbone instead of your ISP's default path.
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