Online traceroute – check your route and packet loss

A traceroute follows the path data packets take from a computer to a destination. Each row shows a hop (router) along the way, how long a packet takes to reach it, and how many packets are lost. This lets you see which network is causing connection problems—for example, packet loss starting at hop 6 in your provider's network.

Select one or more of our locations above and click “Start Trace.” An MTR trace runs from each location to your public IP address, with 10 measurements per hop. The hops appear live in the table. The tool then summarizes the result in plain language—clear, unusual, or a problem—and identifies the network where the problem lies. You don’t need an account.

tracert is the Windows command; traceroute is the Linux and macOS command. Both show the route from your computer to a destination, but only as raw data. WinMTR and mtr repeat the measurement for each hop. This tool also uses MTR with 10 measurements per hop, traces from our locations to you, requires no download, and analyzes the result automatically.

No. The tool traces only to your own public IP address; you don’t need to enter anything. This prevents anyone from using our servers to probe other networks. It’s enough for practical troubleshooting: what matters is the route between you and your server’s location.

Not necessarily. Many routers respond only selectively to trace packets, so they show loss even though actual traffic passes through unaffected. What matters is whether the loss continues to the destination: if only one intermediate hop shows loss and later hops are clear, it's harmless. If the loss persists from one hop to the end, that's where the problem is. The tool checks this automatically.

Your router or connection's firewall often won't respond to trace packets. That's normal and isn't an error. You can still see the full route up to your connection.

After the trace, measure the reverse route from your computer to the location. The page shows a command with your personal code: on Linux and macOS, copy the curl line into a terminal (for example, curl -fsSL https://zap-hosting.com/speedtest/trace.sh | sh -s -- CODE); on Windows, use the PowerShell command. The script needs no installation or administrator rights. The result then appears alongside the measurement from the location. If the first hop already shows packet loss, the problem is probably your Wi-Fi or router: try an Ethernet cable.

The result is available for 90 days via a random link. Only people with the link can see it. We don't store your full IP address: the result shows only a masked version (without the last octet for IPv4, or just the network prefix for IPv6). You can run five traces per address per hour.