MTR (software)
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MTR also known as Matt's traceroute or more recently My traceroute is computer software 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.
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[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. Roger Wolff took over maintenance of MTR in October 1998. Numerous people made contributions (as listed in the "AUTHORS" file).
[edit] Compare
In Microsoft Windows, a new utility, PathPing, was introduced with Windows NT, combining ping and traceroute functionality in a somewhat similar way.
At some point most popular Linux distributions begin installing the MTR package as part of the default installation, however the program was renamed 'My Traceroute' for reasons that are unclear.
MTR frequently reports false packet loss on providers networks as ICMP echo (pings) are frequently dropped by nodes when the ping is destined for the node because the node recognizes this as an exception packet and drops the ICMP packet if the applied limits for exception traffic (e.g. JUNOS secure template) is exceeded or the node is too busy to respond.[citation needed]
