What should traceroute be used for?
Traceroute was designed to check the routing path between a source host and a destination host. It validates that it is possible to reach the remote machine when it succeeds and indicates a problem might exist when it fails. Traceroute was intended to assist network administrators in finding just where a network is broken between a source and destination location. Traceroute should NOT be used for tracking latency or packet loss. IT WAS NOT DESIGNED FOR THIS. The traceroute program can provide the user with information about the hosts through which traffic passes. Note that a traceroute will not show all possible paths through a network to a destination, and usually only shows the most preferred path and only the path that was perferred at the time the packets were sent out.
