I pinged a host using the minimum TTL value that didn't elicit a 'Time to live exceeded' response to calculate the number of hops between us. When I used traceroute, that number was a little bigger. What is the most reliable method for doing this in general? What are the possible explanations for the behavior I described?
English is not my native language, sorry for any mistakes.
Best Answer
Linux traceroute uses UDP by default, so - depending on the routing policies along the path - different routes may be chosen for traceroute and ping (ICMP echo request).
Even with the same protocol, different routes may be probed due to traffic or other parameters. Sometimes you can see multiple routes being used within the same traceroute call.