The traceroute program can be used to determine the routing path to a given destination by sending packets with incrementing TTL values and recording the source of the ICMP time exceeded messages. This way, it can show the intermediate hops and the round-trip times for each packet. The other programs have different purposes: dig is used to query DNS servers, netstat is used to display network connections and statistics, ping is used to test the reachability of a host by sending ICMP echo requests and measuring the response time, and route is used to manipulate the routing table. Reference:
LPI 102-500 Exam Objectives, Topic 110: Network Fundamentals, Weight: 4, 110.3 Basic network troubleshooting LPI 102-500 Study Guide, Chapter 10: Network Fundamentals, Section 10.3: Basic Network Troubleshooting, Page 125-126