Open Visual Traceroute is designed to plot the movements on your network traffic on a gorgeous 3D map.

If you're wondering where in the world Baidu hosts its website, for instance, just type in the hostname box and hit Enter. Open Visual Traceroute sends packets to that host, detects every server on the route, converts their IP addresses to geographic locations and plots them on a 3D map.

This visual approach looks good, and is easy to navigate (it's the usual click and drag to spin the mouse in 3D space, while spinning the mouse wheel zooms in and out).

There's also a table with all the key data: IP address, host name, town/ country/ latitude/ longitude, latency, DNS lookup time and distance from the previous node.

Export options include taking a screenshot, copying data to the clipboard and saving it as a CSV file.

Bonus features start with a Whois option. Hit the button next to any host to find out more about it.

There's also a WinPcap-powered packet sniffer (Open Visual Traceroute installs WinPcap if you don't have it already). Turn this on, captured packets are displayed on the map, and again the table holds all the raw details you need.


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