ping vs traceroute - networkjourney.com

Difference between Ping and Traceroute?

In computer networks, small blocks known as packets transmit the data. But sometimes due to some technical glitch, network congestion or server is down; these packets may not reach the destination. For troubleshooting this kind of network connectivity or latency issues, either you are a beginner or an expert administrator your first priority would be the call of ping and traceroute.
In this article we will help you to understand the difference of ping versus traceroute by plotting a detailed perception of it. The difference between ping and traceroute is mentioned below:-

PINGTRACEROUTE
1. Ping is a command-line utility common on all platforms. 
2. Ping is used to check whether an IP address is accessible or not.
3. Ping basically works by sending a packet to a specific address and then waits for a reply.
4. Depending on the reply from the network address or the server, ping measures the time taken by the echo reply requests.
5. To find the packet loss and return time to its destination, ping uses ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) echo packets. Remote hosts uses echo request type 8 and echo reply type 0 to test the connectivity.
6. Ping is unable to detect the route or the path taken to reach the destination.
7. Using the ping command is very easy you just need to type ‘ping <ip address>’. 
8. For domains you can use the command as ‘ping <domain name>’.
9. The ping command first sends an echo request packet to an address, then waits for a reply. The ping is successful only if:
– the echo request gets to the destination, and
– the destination is able to get an echo reply back to the source within a predetermined time called a timeout. The default value of this timeout is two seconds on Cisco routers.
10. The TTL value of a ping packet cannot be changed.
11. You can find many freeware Ping utilities over the internet available for download.
12. While diagnosing a network ping can tell you if there is any problem in it.
13. While gaming ping comes into play to see the latency issue
1. Traceroute is a utility different on different platforms.
2. Traceroute’s main functionality is to track data packets from your computer to the internet host.
3. Traceroute works by tracking packets sent by your pc to the destination server.
4. Traceroute measures how many hops the packets take to reach the host and how long each hop takes it also determines the exact path taken by the packets.
5. Whereas traceroute, depending on the platform, uses both ICMP and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) data packets to find the packet loss and return time.
6. Traceroute chimes TTL (Time-To-Live) to find the route to the destination.
7. While the command for traceroute is ‘tracert <ip address>’
8. For domains the command used is ‘tracert <domain name>’.
9. Three datagrams are sent, each with a Time-To-Live (TTL) field value set to one. The TTL value of 1 causes the datagram to “timeout” as soon as it hits the first router in the path; this router then responds with an ICMP Time Exceeded Message (TEM) indicating that the datagram has expired.
10. Traceroute sends an incremental TTL till the source is reached or maximum TTL is passed.
11. Windows comes with included utility of Traceroute that can be accessed via the command prompt.
12. On the other hand traceroute will help you to detect the exact point where the problem is occurring.
13. Traceroute is used for video conferencing to debug the slowness in the hops.

There are also some similarities between Ping and Traceroute mentioned as follows:-

Ping and traceroute both are primarily used to test the network connectivity issues. Ping does the same with a direct approach to the host or IP while traceroute approaches the host or IP gathering information at each node it passes through.

If there is no successful reply from the destination while using the ping command, the tracert command is used to spot where the data packets failed along its way.