Can Traceroute detect a load balancer?

Solution 1:

First lets get out of the way the trivial case: I assume that the IP you traceroute'd does not actually belong to the load balancer. Which would be the most typical case.

Leaving that out, it means you try to detect a load balancer that sits on your routing (forwarding) path. These things are called network load balancers (NLBs). The traceroute only recognizes a specific kind of devices - these that decrease the TTL field in a packet. Typical router does that, but an NLB often doesn't.

As a result, you cannot reliably say whether there was an NLB on the way by looking only on traceroute.