Here’s an interesting analogy for how traceroute -T works — in The Bourne Supremacy, Jason Bourne is trying to track down Pamela Landy by calling hotels at random and asking for her:

1. Bourne calls hotel and asks for Pamela (TCP SYN)
2. Hotel operator answers and says “Ein Moment, bitte” (TCP SYN,ACK)
3. Bourne hangs up (TCP RST)

And just like with traceroute (ideally), Landy never finds out that anyone is calling her.

Okay, maybe that was silly, but it was kind of a cool realization while I was watching the movie.