You are the security administrator for a large network.

When you run a traceroute to a target network address, you send a UDP packet with one time to live (TTL) to the target address. The first router this packet hits decreases the TTL to 0 and rejects the packet. Now the TTL for the packet is expired. The router sends back an ICMP message type 11 (Exceeded) code 0 (TTL--Exceeded) packet to your system with a source address. Your system displays the round-trip time for that first hop and sends out the next UDP packet with a TTL of 2.

This process continues until you receive an ICMP message type 3 (Unreachable) code 3 (Port--Unreachable) from the destination system. Traceroute is completed when your machine receives a Port-Unreachable message.

If you receive a message with three asterisks [* * *] during the traceroute, a router in the path doesn't return ICMP messages. Traceroute will continue to send UDP packets until the destination is reached or the maximum number of hops is exceeded.