my traceroute

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

mtr or My traceroute is a computer program which combines the functionality of the traceroute and ping programs in a single network diagnostic tool.

mtr probes routers on the route path by limiting the number of hops 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.

1 Characteristics
2 Example
3 Origins
4 Compare
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Characteristics

mtr is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and it works under modern Unix-like operating systems. It normally works under the text console, but it also has an optional GTK+-based graphical interface.

mtr relies on ICMP Time Exceeded (type 11) packets coming back from routers, or ICMP Echo Reply packets when the packets have hit their destination host.

The tool is often used for network troubleshooting. By showing a list of routers traversed, and the average round-trip time as well as packet loss to each router, it allows the user to identify links between two particular routers responsible for certain fractions of the overall latency or packet loss through the network. This can help identify network over utilization problems.

[edit] Example

                             My traceroute  [v0.71]
source-host.mydomain.com                           Sun Mar 25 00:07:50 2007
Keys:  Help   Display mode   Restart statistics   Order of fields   quit
                                       Packets                Pings
Hostname                            %Loss  Rcv  Snt  Last Best  Avg  Worst
 1. hop1.mydomain.com                  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

[edit] Origins

The original mtr program was written by Matt Kimball in 1997. It was formerly named Matt's Traceroute because of that. Roger Wolff took over maintenance of mtr in October 1998. Numerous people made contributions (they are listed in the "AUTHORS" file which is part of the software distribution).