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When I run traceroute against my domain name I hit cloudflare cache. To avoid this, I'm trying to run traceroute against a path on my domain that I know isn't cached, but I get this:

> traceroute domain.com/some/path
traceroute: unknown host domain.com/some/path

Is there any way to get a traceroute against a path to work?

Eli
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  • Traceroute expects a _host name_ it can lookup for address resolution. A "path" does not make sense there. Also I doubt that your traceroute result is somehow cached. Why do you think so? – arkascha Mar 21 '15 at 09:26
  • This sounds like something you'd use dig for. Are you really trying to trace route or do you just want to know how a host is resolved? DNS would cache based on TTL. – BryceH Mar 21 '15 at 09:39
  • @arkascha, because that's how cloudflare works. If it has cache of a page, it won't request anything from your servers, and the traceroute would just stop at their servers. – Eli Mar 21 '15 at 17:59
  • Cloudflare is a CDN service, not a cache, but a reverse proxy. And whilst it is possible to block traceroute requests on network level (not trivial, absolutely senseless, but possible, yes) this is unlikely your issue here. Question is what you are trying to do. If you specify the host name of some content that is delivered via a CDN, then the hostname is resolved to one of the CDN nodes. Traceroute prompts the route to that host. It is what traceroute is implemented to do. The route stops there, since that is the resolved address of what you entered as host name in your query. – arkascha Mar 21 '15 at 19:13
  • If, however, you want to find out the route to the content host, where you upload things for example, then you need to query _that_ host. Question is if you know what host you are looking for. You will never reach it directly through cloud flare, the nodes behind it are like a separate network to you, similar to a network connected via NAT in certain aspects. Usually not of interest from the outside and technically impossible to explore. But again: from a traceroute point of view the route to the CDN node _is_ the target host. – arkascha Mar 21 '15 at 19:15
  • @arkascha I didn't say Cloudflare is a cache. I said Cloudflare will cache your static content for you, which is true. Yes, that winds up acting like a CDN, though calling Cloudflare that doesn't fully describe it. Anyway, all of this is besides the point. You guessed correctly in your second message. I want to figure out where content is coming from and ensure that if, for example, I'm in Virginia, I'm hitting the nearest content server and not one in Europe. That's the whole point of the question. If traceroute is the wrong utility for this. Can you suggest something else? – Eli Mar 22 '15 at 07:21
  • That is not what I guessed, but the contrary: so you want to find the actual CDN node that delivers your static content and _not_ the real content provider in background? Then traceroute should deliver exactly that one, regardless of the path on a http query (which you simply cannot use with traceroute). Keep in mind: the CDN algorithms resolve to the nearest node _in terms of network logic_, not in terms of geographic locations. That match might well be further away, but still be faster in response. – arkascha Mar 22 '15 at 08:57
  • No I even less understand what you mean by "hit the cloudflare cache". If it is exactly the CDN nodes you are looking for, then obviously you will hit them. Sorry, I am confused about your question. – arkascha Mar 22 '15 at 08:58
  • No. The whole point is, when someone requests content that is *non-static* I want to see which node is delivering it, and make sure that node is one that makes sense geographically or latency-wise. Requests to the homepage just hit cloudflare and do not go through to hit backend servers. I want to make sure I'm hitting a path that provides non-static content to test what I just described. – Eli Mar 23 '15 at 08:58

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