On Windows systems, which command is used to trace the route to a destination?

On Windows systems, which command is used to trace the route to a destination?

• A. traceroute
• B. tracert
• C. ping
• D. ipconfig

Answer: (B)

Tracing the route to a destination on Windows is done with tracert. It maps the path your packets take by sending probes that start with a low TTL and increase with each hop. Each router on the way decrements the TTL and, when it reaches zero, returns an ICMP Time Exceeded message. That reply lets tracert identify the hop number and the router’s address. Collecting responses for each TTL builds a list showing every hop along the route and the round‑trip time to reach each one. When the final destination responds, tracert shows the last hop and its RTT, completing the path to the target. This is Windows’ built‑in traceroute tool; on many Unix-like systems the same idea is implemented with a command simply called traceroute. In contrast, ping checks whether a host is reachable and measures latency to that single destination, but it does not reveal the path, and ipconfig displays your own device’s network configuration rather than the route to a remote host.

Tracing the route to a destination on Windows is done with tracert. It maps the path your packets take by sending probes that start with a low TTL and increase with each hop. Each router on the way decrements the TTL and, when it reaches zero, returns an ICMP Time Exceeded message. That reply lets tracert identify the hop number and the router’s address. Collecting responses for each TTL builds a list showing every hop along the route and the round‑trip time to reach each one. When the final destination responds, tracert shows the last hop and its RTT, completing the path to the target. This is Windows’ built‑in traceroute tool; on many Unix-like systems the same idea is implemented with a command simply called traceroute. In contrast, ping checks whether a host is reachable and measures latency to that single destination, but it does not reveal the path, and ipconfig displays your own device’s network configuration rather than the route to a remote host.