This article is overly negative - if a single use of traceroute offends author ("debugging other people connections"), it does not mean the tool is not useful.

This article is overly negative - if a single use of traceroute offends author ("debugging other people connections"), it does not mean the tool is not useful. I found traceroute to be extremely helpful when debugging the networks I control. It is also pretty good at general troubleshooting of others' websites, as long as you don't expect much. traceroute can tell you if the problem is at your ISP (switch to 3G modem!), or on the backbone (do you have that proxy on the other coast?) or target (just give up). Additionally, this is demonstratively false - traceroute actually works on the great internet. > With that information, go ahead and ask yourself if you think anyone, at any network hardware company, has given a shit about implementing TTL Exceeded since the 90s. The answer is obvious: No. Without a doubt, this is not on anyone's priority list. Nope, just did "traceroute www.yahoo.com" and got 11/13 hops responding.. turns out yahoo direct peers with Verizon, who knew! "google.com" got 8/10 hops responding.. "gekk.info" is badly incomplete, but it did manage to report "dreamhost.com" so I could still make my ISP/backbone/target ISP determination.