Traceroute is a command line utility that measures the speed and route data takes to a destination server.
When you enter the traceroute command, the utility initiates the sending of a packet (using the Internet Control Message Protocol or ICMP), including in the packet a time limit value (known as the "time to live" (TTL) that is designed to be exceeded by the first router that receives it, which will return a Time Exceeded message. This enables traceroute to determine the time required for the hop to the first router. Increasing the time limit value, it resends the packet so that it will reach the second router in the path to the destination, which returns another Time Exceeded message, and so forth.
Traceroute determines when the packet has reached the destination by including a port number that is outside the normal range. When it's received, a Port Unreachable message is returned, enabling traceroute to measure the time length of the final hop. As the tracerouting progresses, the records are displayed for you hop by hop. Actually, each hop is measured three times. (If you see an asterisk (*), this indicates a hop that exceeded some limit, e.g. Firewalls, flawed implementation of IP-stacks, Network Address Translation and IP tunnels.)
If you have a Windows operating system, try traceroute out by clicking on Start-->Programs-->MS-DOS Prompt, and then at the C:WINDOWS prompt, enter:
tracert status.switched.io