This tutorial will show you how to perform a traceroute command on different operating systems including Mac OSX, Windows 8, and Windows 7. It will then show you how to save the traceroute output as a file.
How to Perform a Traceroute on Mac OS X
- Launch Network Utility. You can do this through Mac OS X Spotlight by typing Network Utility and then clicking the Top Hit.
- Click Traceroute.
- Enter domain name for which you want to perform a traceroute (eg - www.stackpath.com).
- Click Trace.
- Select and copy the results. Right-click and select Copy or press COMMAND+C to copy the text.
- Paste the text into a text editor (TextEdit, etc.) and save the file.
How to Perform a Traceroute on Windows 8
- Launch Command Prompt.
- Click the Start button and select Search from the menu list.
- Select Apps and type Command in the search window.
- Press Enter key. This should display the Command Prompt in the Search Results.
Type tracert command and the network address/domain for which you want run this diagnostic tool.
How to Perform a Traceroute on Windows 7
- From the Start menu, search for Command or cmd.
Alternatively, you can press Windows Button + R key to bring up the “Run” window. Then input cmd and confirm with OK to get to the Command Prompt:
- When Command Prompt is open, input tracert and then the domain you would like to run a traceroute to (without http:// or https://)
tracert www.stackpath.com
- After the command is executed, right-click anywhere in the Command Prompt and select Mark from the dropdown menu.
After marking the desired content, press Enter to copy it to your clipboard. From there you can paste the traceroute output to a text file.
How to Store Traceroute Output as a File
After running most of the commands with or without the additional parameters in the console/terminal, the output can be stored to a file by adding > /location/file at the end of the command.
UNIX based systems:
traceroute www.stackpath.com > /tmp/traceroute.txt
Windows:
C:\traceroute.txt