Traceroute is a tracking way with which you can know how web pages actually reach your computer, from the server. Your computer is not directly related to any web page, or any downloadable file, but gets connected through a pathway or chain where you send an information to your router, and from there to the next destination in the pathway.

Sometimes due to a problem in any link, the site loading doesn’t happen. Here is where traceroute helps you in finding the loopholes and problems in the loading of the website.
Here is how to run traceroute in Mac OS –
1. Through the terminal.app in utilities –
The terminal app in mac helps you find the roots of the whole file systems and the operating system. Most of the system processes can be found through the terminal application.
Open the Terminal.app from the list of Utilities in Applications, and enter the following –
traceroute www.thewwwblog.com (replace www.thewwwblog.com with the domain name you want to traceroute)

Hit enter/return and you would see the traceroute process happening.

2. Through Network Utility –
The network utility in mac is useful in many ways to monitor the network usage, and the availability of network etc. Through that you can ping a website, lookup the availability of a domain, the WHOIS data etc. You just need to select the traceroute option, and enter the web address there –

The tracerouting starts and the IPs hit are displayed as shown in the pic –

This is what traceroute helps in –
The results area in the lower part of the window now shows you the trace or track for the signal your computer sends to the address you specified.

When you run a trace your machine sends out a tiny packet of data (40 bytes). The next device along the line sends a notification to you that the data reached it. That all takes a little time, measured in milliseconds. 1 millisecond (ms) = 1/1000th of a second.
The traceroute shows the path of a query sent, first from the local modem to the service provider, and from there to the main hosting site, and so on.