Traceroute, also called tracepath or tracert, is a network tool used to determine the “path” packets take from one IP address to another.

There are many “hops” between your computer and our server. The Internet attempts to find the most efficient pathway for your file download, but sometmes, a hop has a problem and can stop the download cold. If you wait a couple of hours Internet engineers will probably have fixed the problem.

Note that bad hops usually don’t effect website connections, since webpages download extremely fast. But when you download a large video file, the connection needs to remain stable for a much longer time. Sometimes, a bad hop will cause your connection to timeout and the download will fail. Runnnig a traceroute back to our server can tell you if there are any problems along the path.

You can run the traceroute command directly from your computer through your terminal program or by using a special website. whatismyipaddress has traceroute and several other useful tools.

In your terminal program, just enter the command: traceroute 198.106.50.6
That’s the IP address of our sever which is sending you your video download. Here’s an example of a 13-hop traceroute from our server in the U.S. to a user in Australia (we’ve x-ed out the destination IP for privacy). If there is a problem, a hop will stall and the trace will stop before it reaches the destination IP address.

> traceroute 136.xxx.xxx.xx
traceroute to 136.xxx.xxx.xx (136.xxx.xxx.xx), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 161.58.109.129 (161.58.109.129) 0.584 ms 0.525 ms 0.737 ms
2 ge-1-0-0-453.r00.stngva01.us.wh.verio.net (198.65.47.17) 0.611 ms 0.734 ms 0.850 ms
3 vl-5.r01.stngva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.27.190) 0.611 ms 0.595 ms 0.489 ms
4 xe-5-1-0.r21.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.84) 2.360 ms 1.811 ms 2.110 ms
5 ae-0.r20.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.4) 1.611 ms 3.714 ms 29.968 ms
6 as-2.r21.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.24) 63.202 ms 68.765 ms 71.321 ms
7 po-2.r00.lsanca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.250) 67.324 ms 65.706 ms 62.951 ms
8 ge-1-20.r00.lsanca03.us.ce.gin.ntt.net (204.1.253.166) 218.992 ms 221.466 ms 213.373 ms
9 so-4-0-0.bb1.b.syd.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.157) 219.243 ms 219.619 ms 219.242 ms
10 so-2-0-0.bb1.a.mel.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.33) 225.490 ms 233.391 ms 230.615 ms
11 gigabitethernet0.er1.swinburne.cpe.aarnet.net.au (202.158.200.130) 240.481 ms 416.550 ms 291.703 ms
12 gw1.er1.swinburne.cpe.aarnet.net.au (202.158.200.142) 239.605 ms 234.885 ms 229.364 ms
13 136.xxx.xxx.xx (136.xxx.xxx.xx) 240.231 ms * 238.380 ms

If your download times out, try running traceroute to see if there are any holdups along the path.