When you type in a website address on a browser, your computer connects to the server that hosts that website & then travels back to your computer with information.
Tracing lets you visualize how the internet signals travel . Tracing also lets you analyze which part of the internet network is taking up the longest time to pass the information.
Visual Route is a free tool to Test Internet Connectivity & Trace IP Addresses .
Free Visual Route Tracer & Free IP Tracker is a free service from Visualware.
All you need to do is to type in the web address you are trying to reach (www.somedomain.com). The free tracer tracks the internet signals from your computer to the final location that hosts the website somedomain.com.
Along the way, the free tracer collects data like how much time the signal had to wait at each node, how long the signal had to travel & where all it had to travel to reach the domain.
In the example above, you will get data like:
1. the geographical map shows the 2 locations, where the request was made (that is your computer) & where the host of the website is (in the example above its Houston, TX)
2. how long it too to reach the destination
3. how many different internet segments it had to cross (10 in this case from New York City, NY to Houston, TX),
4. which segment took the most time &
5.how look it took to look up the DNS server for the host’s location.
This is a pretty nice free online tracer & free IP tracker tool that you can use from time to time to know if your connections as well as that of your hosts (in case you run websites too) are healthy. It will tell you which is the slowest part of the network or if your host is not reachable, trace route tool will show the faulty section of the internet.
