Interpreting trace and ping

Hello, Please point me to some info about interpreting the outputs for the traceroute and ping commands. More specifically with regards to the flags in the Unix commands and Cisco's extended commands. I have read the man pages and scourged cisco's website. In essence, I would like to know how people have used them, i.e., what one would expect to see under certain circumstances. For example, how rate-limit might affect the output, why certain bit patterns are useful in troubleshooting certain links. Basically I would like a more granular understand in the use of the commands other than the usual reachability and path info. Sourcing, packet size, no name-lookup, DF bit , etc, etc, are items everyone is familiar with. Please advise. thanks