Which command traces the route an IP packet takes to a destination and lists each hop with the hop's IP address and round-trip time?

Which command traces the route an IP packet takes to a destination and lists each hop with the hop's IP address and round-trip time?

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

Answer: (A)

Tracing the path a packet takes through a network is about mapping the route to a destination while measuring performance at each step. The command that does this is designed to reveal every hop along the path by sending probe packets with gradually increasing TTL values. Each router on the way replies (often with an ICMP Time Exceeded message) and this lets the tool report the IP address of that hop and the round-trip time to reach it. Taken together, you get a list of all intermediate routers from source to destination, with the time it took to reach each one. This makes it ideal for diagnosing routing issues and where delays occur. Other commands serve different purposes: ping checks whether a host is reachable and measures latency to that host, but it doesn’t show the path; and ipconfig/ifconfig display local network interface settings, not route paths.

Tracing the path a packet takes through a network is about mapping the route to a destination while measuring performance at each step. The command that does this is designed to reveal every hop along the path by sending probe packets with gradually increasing TTL values. Each router on the way replies (often with an ICMP Time Exceeded message) and this lets the tool report the IP address of that hop and the round-trip time to reach it. Taken together, you get a list of all intermediate routers from source to destination, with the time it took to reach each one. This makes it ideal for diagnosing routing issues and where delays occur. Other commands serve different purposes: ping checks whether a host is reachable and measures latency to that host, but it doesn’t show the path; and ipconfig/ifconfig display local network interface settings, not route paths.