Which command is used to trace the route to a destination?

• A. ping
• B. traceroute
• C. show ip route
• D. nslookup

Answer: (B)

Tracing the route to a destination involves uncovering the path your packets take through the network. A traceroute command sends probes toward the target with gradually increasing TTL (time-to-live) values. Each router along the way that decrements the TTL to zero forwards an ICMP Time Exceeded message back to the source, allowing traceroute to identify that hop and measure the round-trip time. By incrementing TTL step by step, you get a list of every hop between you and the destination and can spot where delays or failures occur along the route.

This differs from a simple ping, which only checks whether the destination is reachable and measures the time to reach it, with no information about the intervening routers. It also differs from showing the routing table, which reveals only how the local router will forward traffic, not the actual path packets take to the destination. And it’s not a DNS query tool, which is what nslookup provides. Traceroute is the go-to for mapping the route and diagnosing where routing or connectivity problems arise.