When you are unable to reach one of our web-servers we may ask you to provide a tracert report ("traceroute") for that server, which is simply a list of the machines (called "hops") in between your PC our web-server.
It also helps us identify whether there is a DNS records issue on your end which is stopping your machine from knowing the address of our web-server.
We will ask you to run the following steps and then send us back a screenshot of the results window.
Please note that it is perfectly normal for "Request timed out" to be shown for many hops along the way - this is because the server in question has declined your request to provide information about its identity. Obviously, however, if hop 1 times out and then you never see the successful last hop, we know there is an issue with your ISP being able to talk to ours...
Windows
On Windows 8, 10, and 11, right-click your Start button and choose Run. Alternatively (or if Windows 7), press and hold your Windows key on your keyboard, then press R.
Type cmd and press the OK button.
In the command window which opens, type tracert then leave a space and then type in the server address we have asked you to trace to.
You will get something like the following:
To capture this image, make sure the cmd window is selected/in focus, then hold Alt and press Print Screen ("PrtScn" on many keyboards).
macOS
Launch the Networking Utility application, type in the server name we requested a report for, and click the Trace button:
To capture the results, hold Cmd + Shift and press 4. Then you can click and drag with your mouse to capture the relevant screen area for the Network Utility window.
Please note that using Terminal with the traceroute command has shown to give different results in our usage, and frequently shows far more hops or never completes, and so we don't use it. If it does work for you, feel free to use that method instead. Capture the screenshot in the same way as mentioned above.
Sending us back the results
We require you to send back a screenshot of the results in the list, so the image you're sending back should include all of the data shown in the samples above.
Having captured the image as directed in the OS instructions above, open the Helpdesk ticket in your email client/browser and Ctrl+V to paste the captured image straight in to the reply area. If you chose to save the capture to a file first, simply drag the file onto the ticket to attach it that way.