IT Technical Interview Practice Test

Understanding how data reaches a destination relies on showing each router or hop along the path. Tracert (traceroute on other systems) does exactly that by sending probe packets with gradually increasing Time-To-Live values. Each router that forwards the packet decrements the TTL and, when it expires, sends back an ICMP error message, revealing the hop’s address. By collecting these responses, you get a list of every intermediate router and the time it took to reach each one, which is invaluable for diagnosing where delays or failures occur. This is different from a simple ping, which only tells you whether the destination is reachable and how long it takes to get there, without listing the route in between. Nslookup is a DNS query tool, and ipconfig shows your local network configuration. So the tool that analyzes the path from a local host to a server and reveals intermediate hops is tracert.