mtr -- elegant combination of ping and traceroute

Utility mtr very elegantly combines the functionality of the traceroute and ping in a single network diagnostic tool especially suitable for analyzing network bottlenecks and "strange" behavior. It provide run-time statistical metrics as well as max an min and standard deviation values for transmitted packets (Loss% Avg -average Best -min Wrst -max StDev - standard deviation

As mtr starts, it investigates the network connection between the host mtr runs on and a user-specified destination host. After it determines the address of each network hop between the machines, it sends a sequence ICMP ECHO requests to each one to determine the quality of the link to each machine. As it does this, it prints running statistics about each machine.

mtr is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

From wikipedia:

MTR (My traceroute, originally called Matt's traceroute) is a computer program which combines the functionality of the traceroute and ping programs in a single network diagnostic tool.[1]

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.

The original MTR (known as Matt's traceroute) program was written by Matt Kimball in 1997. Roger Wolff took over maintenance of MTR (renamed to My traceroute) in October 1998.[2]

MTR is licensed under the terms of 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, code 0) packets coming back from routers, or ICMP Echo Reply packets when the packets have hit their destination host. MTR also has a 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 (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 and works in a similar manner but instead relies on ICMPv6 messages.

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.[3]

Example

My traceroute [v0.75] b99 (0.0.0.0) Tue Sep 2 13:51:17 2014 Keys: Help Display mode Restart statistics Order of fields quit Packets Pings Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev 1. 10.194.176.2 0.0% 523 0.3 0.2 0.2 24.5 1.1 2. 10.194.241.5 0.0% 523 0.4 0.4 0.3 70.3 3.1 3. 10.21.217.250 0.0% 523 1.7 3.7 1.6 55.1 5.7 4. 10.172.18.207 0.0% 523 21.9 24.4 21.9 82.7 6.1 5. 10.200.56.1 0.0% 523 22.4 24.7 21.9 62.3 6.3 6. 10.201.150.2 0.0% 522 22.3 24.9 22.2 63.2 6.3 7. 10.201.101.53 0.0% 522 22.3 24.4 21.9 66.3 5.8

Name

mtr - a network diagnostic tool

Synopsis

mtr [-hvrctglspniu46] [--help] [--version] [--report] [--report-wide] [--report-cycles COUNT] [--curses] [--split] [--raw] [--no-dns] [--gtk] [--address IP.ADD.RE.SS] [--interval SECONDS] [--psize BYTES | -s BYTES] HOSTNAME [PACKETSIZE]

Description

mtr combines the functionality of the traceroute and ping programs in a single network diagnostic tool.

As mtr starts, it investigates the network connection between the host mtr runs on and HOSTNAME. by sending packets with purposly low TTLs. It continues to send packets with low TTL, noting the response time of the intervening routers. This allows mtr to print the response percentage and response times of the internet route to HOSTNAME. A sudden increase in packetloss or response time is often an indication of a bad (or simply overloaded) link.

Options

-h

--help

Print the summary of command line argument options.

-v

--version

Print the installed version of mtr.

-r

--report

This option puts mtr into report mode. When in this mode, mtr will run for the number of cycles specified by the -c option, and then print statistics and exit.

This mode is useful for generating statistics about network quality.

Note that each running instance of mtr generates a significant amount of network traffic. Using mtr to measure the quality of your network may result in decreased network performance.

-w

--report-wide

This option puts mtr into wide report mode. When in this mode, mtr will not cut hostnames in the report.

-c COUNT

--report-cycles COUNT

Use this option to set the number of pings sent to determine both the machines on the network and the reliability of those machines. Each cycle lasts one second.

-s BYTES

--psize BYTES

PACKETSIZE

These options or a trailing PACKETSIZE on the commandline sets the packet size used for probing. It is in bytes inclusive IP and

ICMP headers

If set to a negative number, every iteration will use a different, random packetsize upto that number.

-t

--curses

Use this option to force mtr to use the curses based terminal interface (if available).

-n

--no-dns

Use this option to force mtr to display numeric IP numbers and not try to resolve the host names.

-o fields order

--order fields order

Use this option to specify the fields and their order when loading mtr.
Example: -o "LSD NBAW"

-g

--gtk

Use this option to force mtr to use the GTK+ based X11 window interface (if available). GTK+ must have been available on the system when mtr was built for this to work. See the GTK+ web page at http://www.gimp.org/gtk/ for more information about GTK+.

-p

--split

Use this option to set mtr to spit out a format that is suitable for a split-user interface.

-l

--raw

Use this option to tell mtr to use the raw output format. This format is better suited for archival of the measurement results. It could be parsed to be presented into any of the other display methods.

-a IP.ADD.RE.SS

--address IP.ADD.RE.SS

Use this option to bind outgoing packets' socket to specific interface, so that any packet will be sent through this interface. NOTE that this option doesn't apply to DNS requests (which could be and could not be what you want).

-i SECONDS

--interval SECONDS

Use this option to specify the positive number of seconds between ICMP ECHO requests. The default value for this parameter is one second.

-u

Use UDP datagrams instead of ICMP ECHO.

-4

Use IPv4 only.

-6

Use IPv6 only.

Bugs

Some modern routers give a lower priority to ICMP ECHO packets than to other network traffic. Consequently, the reliability of these routers reported by mtr will be significantly lower than the actual reliability of these routers.

Contact Information

For the latest version, see the mtr web page at http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/.

Subscribe to the mtr mailing list. All mtr related announcements are posted to the mtr mailing list. To subscribe, send email to [email protected] with subscribe mtr in the body of the message. To send a message to the mailing list, mail to mtr@lists.xmission.com.

Bug reports and feature requests should be sent to the mtr mailing list.

Softpanorama May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)	Home	Switchboard	Unix Administration	Red Hat	TCP/IP Networks	Neoliberalism	Toxic Managers
	(slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and bastardization of classic Unix

News	Traceroute	Recommended Links	ping	TCPtraceroute	ICMP
ICMP Tools	0trace	traceroute -p	hping2	Humor	Etc

Top Visited <p>Your browser does not support iframes.</p>
Bulletin	Latest	Past week	Past month	Google Search