Asterisks keep going in traceroute

I know that asterisks mean that the router didn’t send the ICMP message back saying that TTL was 0 and I had to dump the request.

but sometimes for some cases when I want to check for the path of my packets to a server, at some point it keeps printing * * * and never ends. Even when I set -h flag (or -m flag depending on your operating system) to 255 which is the maximum number of TTL, it keeps printing asterisks to the end, I mean clearly my packet doesn’t need to take 255 hops to the destination.

Here is an example for microsoft.com

tracert -h 255 microsoft.com

Tracing route to microsoft.com [40.76.4.15]
over a maximum of 255 hops:

  1   125 ms   127 ms   144 ms  10.10.10.232
  2   148 ms   151 ms   125 ms  149.202.66.253
  3   122 ms   129 ms   123 ms  10.50.60.61
  4   139 ms   128 ms   127 ms  10.17.130.102
  5   123 ms   125 ms   125 ms  10.73.0.6
  6   150 ms   132 ms   134 ms  10.95.33.10
  7   135 ms   131 ms   133 ms  be100-1112.ams-5-a9.nl.eu [213.251.128.67]
  8   160 ms   181 ms   181 ms  ams-ix-2.microsoft.com [80.249.209.21]
  9   169 ms   187 ms   131 ms  ae25-0.icr02.ams21.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.239.77]
 10   210 ms   210 ms   208 ms  be-122-0.ibr02.ams21.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.22.245]
 11   224 ms   218 ms   205 ms  be-11-0.ibr02.lon24.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.16.2]
 12   211 ms   208 ms   214 ms  be-1-0.ibr02.lon22.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.16.57]
 13   205 ms   211 ms   219 ms  be-7-0.ibr02.nyc30.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.18.154]
 14   211 ms   216 ms   211 ms  104.44.28.55
 15   203 ms   224 ms   219 ms  ae162-0.icr02.bl20.ntwk.msn.net [104.44.21.234]
 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 17     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 18     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 19     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 20     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 21     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 22     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 23     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 24     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 25     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 26     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 27     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 28     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 29     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 30     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 31     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 32     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 33     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 34     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 35     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 36     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 37     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 38     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 39     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 40     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 41     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 42     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 43     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 44     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 45     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 46     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 47     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 48     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 49     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 50     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 51     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 52     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 53     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 54     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 55     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 56     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 57     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 58     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 59     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 60     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 61     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 62     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 63     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 64     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 65     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 66     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 67     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 68     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 69     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 70     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 71     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 72     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 73     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 74     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 75     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 76     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 77     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 78     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 79     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 80     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 81     *        *        *     Request timed out.