How To Perform A Traceroute And Ping From Your Local Network

If you’re having trouble connecting to your website or server in your web browser, it’s important to perform a traceroute and/or ping from your local network to see where the connection is timing out.

At NameHero we’re known for 99.9% uptime, therefore if you’re website is not connecting, it’s likely there is something preventing it from doing so.

An IP block is most likely the cause if you’ve accidentally used the wrong username and password more than five times to access cPanel, Web Host Manager, an email account, FTP, etc.  You do have the ability to unblock your IP from our client portal.

Regardless the issue, a traceroute and ping will reveal what exactly is going on:

How To Perform A Traceroute

If you’re using a Mac, you can easily do this by going to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal.

Once you open up a new window, type in traceroute yourwebsite.com.

For example, if I do one for namehero.com it looks like this:

All of the output shows the number of “hops” it takes to connect to the server.  If any of these timeout, it’ll diagnose where the problem is.

Notice above, you’ll see googlefiber.net which is my ISP and then you can see it connect directly to Cloudflare’s location here in Kansas City.

How To Perform A Ping

A ping will actually hit the server and provide the response time back in milliseconds.

If you’re using a Mac, you can also perform this inside the Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal).

Once the terminal window is open, you will type in ping yourwebsite.com.

For example, if I do one for namehero.com it looks like this:

The terminal window will continue pinging the website until you close the window (or exit out).l

As you can see above, the server is responding each ping.

If I was unable to access namehero.com, it will be showing timeout errors instead.

How To Traceroute/Ping On Windows

If you’re using a Windows PC, you can use the command line to perform each task.

Depending on the version of Windows you’re running, you’ll need to open up cmd.exe.

You can click the start menu and search for it:

Once you open up the command prompt you would use each of the respective commands:

ping yourwebsite.com

tracert yourwebsite.com 

Basically the commands are the same for Mac, except traceroute which is simple tracert:

The output is the exact same and is what you should paste to our support team if requested.

How To Traceroute And Ping

I filmed a video tutorial where I walk you through each one as well as tips on how to unblock your IP address here:

Both of these tools are extremely easy to use but they provide the exact data we need to help diagnose important connection issues.

As I stated in my video, I understand how frustrating it is when you cannot reach your website, but please rest assured we’ve seen pretty much everything and can help you resolve these issues rather quickly.

Let us know if you have any questions or need assistance!