My traceroute, originally named Matt's traceroute (MTR), is a

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer progra ...

which combines the functions of the

traceroute In computing, traceroute and tracert are computer network diagnostic commands for displaying possible routes (paths) and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The history of the route is recorded as the ...

and ping programs in one network diagnostic tool. MTR probes routers on the route path by limiting the number of

hops Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant '' Humulus lupulus'', a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants. They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to wh ...

individual packets may traverse, and listening to responses of their expiry. It will regularly repeat this process, usually once per second, and keep track of the response times of the hops along the path.

History

The original ''Matt's traceroute'' program was written by Matt Kimball in 1997. Roger Wolff took over maintaining MTR (renamed ''My traceroute'') in October 1998.

Fundamentals

MTR is licensed under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end user In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ulti ...

(GPL) and works under modern

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating systems. It normally works under the text console, but it also has an optional

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and prop ...

-based

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows User (computing), users to Human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through graphical icon (comp ...

(GUI). MTR relies on

Internet Control Message Protocol The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a supporting protocol in the Internet protocol suite. It is used by network devices, including routers, to send error messages and operational information indicating success or failure when commu ...

(ICMP) Time Exceeded (type 11, code 0) packets coming back from routers, or ICMP Echo Reply packets when the packets have hit their destination host. MTR also has a

User Datagram Protocol In computer networking, the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core communication protocols of the Internet protocol suite used to send messages (transported as datagrams in packets) to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) networ ...

(UDP) mode (invoked with "-u" on the command line or pressing the "u" key in the curses interface) that sends UDP packets, with the

time to live Time to live (TTL) or hop limit is a mechanism which limits the lifespan or lifetime of data in a computer or network. TTL may be implemented as a counter or timestamp attached to or embedded in the data. Once the prescribed event count or times ...

(TTL) field in the IP header increasing by one for each probe sent, toward the destination host. When the UDP mode is used, MTR relies on ICMP port unreachable packets (type 3, code 3) when the destination is reached. MTR also supports

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. I ...

and works in a similar manner but instead relies on

ICMPv6 Internet Control Message Protocol version 6 (ICMPv6) is the implementation of the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). ICMPv6 is an integral part of IPv6 and performs error reporting and diagnostic fu ...

messages. The tool is often used for network troubleshooting. By showing a list of routers traversed, and the average

round-trip time In telecommunications, round-trip delay (RTD) or round-trip time (RTT) is the amount of time it takes for a signal to be sent ''plus'' the amount of time it takes for acknowledgement of that signal having been received. This time delay includes pr ...

as well as

packet loss Packet loss occurs when one or more packets of data travelling across a computer network fail to reach their destination. Packet loss is either caused by errors in data transmission, typically across wireless networks, or network congestion.Kur ...

to each router, it allows users to identify links between two given routers responsible for certain fractions of the overall latency or packet loss through the network. This can help identify network overuse problems.

Examples

This example shows MTR running on

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

tracing a route from the host machine (example.lan) to a

web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initi ...

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...

(p25.www.re2.yahoo.com) across the

Level 3 Communications Level 3 Communications was an American multinational telecommunications and Internet service provider company headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. It ultimately became a part of CenturyLink (now Lumen Technologies), where Level 3 President ...

network.

                             My traceroute  0.71 

This is a list of firearm  cartridges which have bullets that are  caliber or larger.

*''Length'' refers to the cartridge case 
Case or CASE may refer to:

 Containers
* Case (goods), a package of related merchandise
* Cartridge case or casing, a ...
            example.lan                           Sun Mar 25 00:07:50 2007

                                       Packets                Pings
Hostname                            %Loss  Rcv  Snt  Last Best  Avg  Worst
 1. example.lan                        0%   11   11     1    1    1      2
 2. ae-31-51.ebr1.Chicago1.Level3.n   19%    9   11     3    1    7     14
 3. ae-1.ebr2.Chicago1.Level3.net      0%   11   11     7    1    7     14
 4. ae-2.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.ne   19%    9   11    19   18   23     31
 5. ae-1.ebr1.Washington1.Level3.ne   28%    8   11    22   18   24     30
 6. ge-3-0-0-53.gar1.Washington1.Le    0%   11   11    18   18   20     36
 7. 63.210.29.230                      0%   10   10    19   19   19     19
 8. t-3-1.bas1.re2.yahoo.com           0%   10   10    19   18   32    106
 9. p25.www.re2.yahoo.com              0%   10   10    19   18   19     19

An additional example below shows a recent version of MTR running on

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

MPLS Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) is a routing technique in telecommunications networks that directs data from one node to the next based on labels rather than network addresses. Whereas network addresses identify endpoints the labels identif ...

labels are displayed by default when the "-e" switch is used on the command line (or the "e" key is pressed in the curses interface):

                                  My traceroute   0.82dax.prolixium.com (0.0.0.0)                                      Sun Jan  1 12:58:02 2012
Keys:  Help   Display mode   Restart statistics   Order of fields   quit
                                                 Packets               Pings
 Host                                          Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1. voxel.prolixium.net                         0.0%    13    0.4   1.7   0.4  10.4   3.2
 2. 0.ae2.tsr1.lga5.us.voxel.net                0.0%    12   10.8   2.9   0.2  10.8   4.3
 3. 0.ae59.tsr1.lga3.us.voxel.net               0.0%    12    0.4   1.7   0.4  16.0   4.5
 4. rtr.loss.net.internet2.edu                  0.0%    12    4.8   7.4   0.3  41.8  15.4
 5. 64.57.21.210                                0.0%    12    5.4  15.7   5.3 126.7  35.0
 6. nox1sumgw1-vl-530-nox-mit.nox.org           0.0%    12  109.5  60.6  23.0 219.5  66.0
     PLS: Lbl 172832 Exp 0 S 1 TTL 1 7. nox1sumgw1-peer--207-210-142-234.nox.org    0.0%    12   25.0  23.2  23.0  25.0   0.6
 8. B24-RTR-2-BACKBONE-2.MIT.EDU                0.0%    12   23.2  23.4  23.2  24.9   0.5
 9. MITNET.TRANTOR.CSAIL.MIT.EDU                0.0%    12   23.4  23.4  23.3  23.5   0.1
10. trantor.helicon.csail.mit.edu               0.0%    12   23.7  25.0  23.5  26.5   1.3
11. zermatt.csail.mit.edu                       0.0%    12   23.1  23.1  23.1  23.3   0.1

Windows versions

WinMTR is a Windows GUI application functionally equivalent to MTR. It was originally developed by Appnor MSP S.R.L.; it is now maintained by White-Tiger. Although it is very similar, WinMTR shares no common code with MTR. A console version of MTR does exist for Windows, but it has fewer features than MTR on other platforms.Based on: https://github.com/traviscross/mtr/issues/55#issuecomment-264057403

References

External links