How to use traceroute command in unix

Question

how to determine if the server is slow or not with traceroute unix command . Here is the traceroute Out put of a host IP .

traceroute 188.165.247.43
traceroute to 188.165.247.43 (188.165.247.43), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  iPhone.local (172.20.10.1)  1.493 ms  2.546 ms  3.287 ms
 2  * * *
 3  10.52.141.50 (10.52.141.50)  782.228 ms  784.069 ms  786.188 ms
 4  10.52.141.54 (10.52.141.54)  786.491 ms  786.510 ms  786.927 ms
 5  10.52.92.237 (10.52.92.237)  787.157 ms  788.059 ms  788.001 ms
 6  aircel-gprs-177.5.251.27.aircel.co.in (27.251.5.177)  787.140 ms  98.452 ms  100.978 ms
 7  114.79.219.41 (114.79.219.41)  158.391 ms  161.252 ms  161.610 ms
 8  abs-cn-61.194.148.202.aircel.co.in (202.148.194.61)  178.216 ms  175.575 ms  193.356 ms
 9  114.79.196.185 (114.79.196.185)  197.859 ms  218.156 ms  220.694 ms
10  abs-cn-129.198.148.202.aircel.co.in (202.148.198.129)  221.497 ms  238.732 ms  157.212 ms
11  * * *
12  * * *
13  125.17.180.149 (125.17.180.149)  137.955 ms  157.563 ms  139.677 ms
14  AES-Static-137.36.144.59.airtel.in (59.144.36.137)  289.250 ms  310.797 ms  290.745 ms
15  * * *
16  * * *
17  * * *
18  * * *
19  * * *
20  * * *
21  * * *
22  * * *
23  * * *
24  * * *
25  * * *
26  * * *
27  * * *
28  * * *
29  * * *
30  * * *

is it possible to determine whether remote server is responding good or not by looking at the output ?

Solution

From your output, you are not able to reach the destination. The * denotes a timeout.

traceroute command shows the path to your destination. packets send to will pass through the routers and you receive a response obeying the time to live (TTL) value for each packets. the * denotes a timeout as a response from the intermediate routers that says the packet has expired. This could be due to various reasons. Either the TTL value is not enough, or could be that a firewall or router is denying the trace packets. In which case you cannot always confirm that the destination server is in fact down. Search google on traceroute command, you will get plenty of resources.

Comments

[Admin]

The answer below is good, but I'd like to add that traceroute only shows you how packets traverse the network. You still don't know if e.g. a web server is running slowly due to a cgi script.

[Admin]

I don't know what you're trying to find, but traceroute is probably the wrong tool for the job. It doesn't say anything about the server. Traceroute gives you some information about how packets are routed between your machine and the target, that's all.