Why Traceroute Shows Packet Loss on Cisco, Juniper & MikroTik (And Why Your Network May Be Perfectly Healthy
Traceroute is one of the most valuable network troubleshooting tools available, but it is also one of the most misunderstood. This article explains why routers from Cisco, Juniper, MikroTik, and other vendors intentionally deprioritize ICMP responses generated by their control plane, often causing apparent packet loss on intermediate hops while forwarding production traffic without issue. By understanding how traceroute, ICMP, and modern router architectures work together, network engineers can accurately distinguish between harmless diagnostic behavior and genuine forwarding problems.