If you have spent any time troubleshooting your connection to the Internet, then you are probably familiar with traceroute. It’s a command line utility, found on many operating systems, that discovers each router between your machine and a specified host. It’s especially helpful when trying to troubleshoot connection problems. Unfortunately, it only has a text interface, making it difficult to decipher where a router truly resides on the web.

Enter Visualroute from Visualware, Inc. This handy utility combines the features of traceroute, with a geographic database of known routers and hosts throughout the world. Simply type in a name or IP address, and within seconds you’ll get a map with the approximate locations of each router along the way. It’s free to try, $40.00 to buy and is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and various flavors of Unix. It’s a bit pricey for a utility like this, but I’ve found it very helpful when troubleshooting downed data connections and when teaching others about basic routing concepts.