Windows Powershell: tracert command (or in OSX: traceroute command)

At the end of the Lesson on Routers and Redundancy, I had the kids open up a Windows Powershell command prompt and use the ‘tracert’ command to trace the network path to their favorite website (espn.com, etc). Then I called some random students to share the path that was shown. It generated a great discussion as some of the destinations were local (to Seattle) and some were regional (e.g. New York, DC, Texas, etc) and some were international.

On Mac OSX, the command is “traceroute”.

Recommend you read up on tracert (or traceroute) usage and have a grasp of ICMP to field any questions the kids might have about the results (such as “Request Timed Out” or the three columns of times). Wikipedia is a good place to start:

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