How the traceroute utility uses ICMP ECHO requests to trace the path from one networked node to another identifying all intermediate hops between the two nodes?

The traceroute utility uses ICMP ECHO requests by sending packets with incrementally increasing Time to Live (TTL) values. Each router that handles the packet decrements the TTL; when it reaches zero, the router sends back an ICMP Time Exceeded message to the sender. By starting with a TTL of 1 and increasing it for each subsequent packet, traceroute identifies each intermediate hop along the path to the destination, displaying the round-trip time for each hop. Ultimately, this process reveals the entire route taken by packets from the source to the destination.