In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and use Traceroute on your CentOS 7. For those of you who didn’t know, Traceroute is a command-line network diagnostic tool that tracks the path of data packets from one network device to another. It helps you identify issues in your network infrastructure, such as packet loss and latency, by showing you the path that your network traffic takes.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Traceroute network diagnostics on a CentOS 7 or RHEL-based such as Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, or Fedora.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: CentOS 7.
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install and Use Traceroute on CentOS 7
Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.
sudo yum clean all sudo yum update
Step 2. Installing Traceroute on CentOS 7.
By default, Traceroute is available on the CentOS base repository. Now run the following command below to install Traceroute to your CentOS/RHEL-based system:
sudo yum install traceroute
The package manager will download and install the Traceroute package and all its dependencies automatically.
Step 3. How to Use Traceroute
Once you have installed Traceroute, you can use it to test your network connectivity. The basic syntax of the Traceroute command is:
traceroute [host]
For example, if you wanted to run a traceroute on idroot.us, you’d run the command:
traceroute idroot.us
The output of the command will display the list of routers, along with their IP addresses, that your network traffic passes through on the way to the target host. It will also show the time that it takes for the packets to travel between each hop, which can help you identify where the network latency is occurring.
For example, the following command can be used to identify the hops and latency to idroot.us using ICMP packets:
traceroute -I idroot.us
Display basic command-line options help for more usage:
traceroute --help
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Traceroute. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing use Traceroute network diagnostics on your CentOS 7 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Traceroutet website.