Last week I was testing network connectivity with another engineer and he used pathping instead of tracert on a Windows machine. I had never heard of pathping so I was quite interested to see how it was different. After using it, I realized that it's much faster than tracert on Windows! When I run the traceroute command on Linux, it usually completes the trace lightning fast. Using tracert on Windows, however, usually takes at least 10 - 15 seconds to complete a trace.
Here is what Wikipedia says about the pathping command:
"Pathping is a network utility supplied in Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. It combines the functionality of Ping with that of Traceroute (in Windows: tracert), by providing details of the path between two hosts and Ping-like statistics for each node in the path based on samples taken over a time period, depending on how many nodes are between the start and end host."
So, I have officially replaced pathping with tracert in my mental toolbox of diagnostic commands for Windows machines.