TRACEROUTE(8) MachTen System Manager’s Manual TRACEROUTE(8)

NAME
traceroute - print the route packets take to network host

SYNOPSIS
traceroute [-m max_ttl] [-n] [-p port] [-q nqueries] [-r] [-s src_addr]
[-t tos] [-w waittime] host [packetsize]

DESCRIPTION
The Internet is a large and complex aggregation of network hardware, con-
nected together by gateways. Tracking the route one’s packets follow (or
finding the miscreant gateway that’s discarding your packets) can be dif-
ficult. Traceroute utilizes the IP protocol ‘time to live’ field and at-
tempts to elicit an ICMP TIME_EXCEEDED response from each gateway along
the path to some host.

The only mandatory parameter is the destination host name or IP number.
The default probe datagram length is 38 bytes, but this may be increased
by specifying a packet size (in bytes) after the destination host name.

Other options are:

-m max_ttl
Set the max time-to-live (max number of hops) used in outgoing
probe packets. The default is 30 hops (the same default used for
TCP connections).

-n Print hop addresses numerically rather than symbolically and nu-
merically (saves a nameserver address-to-name lookup for each
gateway found on the path).

-p port
Set the base UDP port number used in probes (default is 33434).
Traceroute hopes that nothing is listening on UDP ports base to
base+nhops-1 at the destination host (so an ICMP PORT_UNREACHABLE
message will be returned to terminate the route tracing). If
something is listening on a port in the default range, this op-
tion can be used to pick an unused port range.

-q nqueries
Set the number of probes per ‘‘ttl’’ to nqueries (default is
three probes).

-r Bypass the normal routing tables and send directly to a host on
an attached network. If the host is not on a directly-attached
network, an error is returned. This option can be used to ping a
local host through an interface that has no route through it
(e.g., after the interface was dropped by routed(8)).

-s src_addr
Use the following IP address (which must be given as an IP num-
ber, not a hostname) as the source address in outgoing probe
packets. On hosts with more than one IP address, this option can
be used to force the source address to be something other than
the IP address of the interface the probe packet is sent on. If
the IP address is not one of this machine’s interface addresses,
an error is returned and nothing is sent.

-t tos Set the type-of-service in probe packets to the following value
(default zero). The value must be a decimal integer in the range
0 to 255. This option can be used to see if different types-of-
service result in different paths. (If you are not running a
4.3BSD-Tahoe or later system, this may be academic since the nor-
mal network services like telnet and ftp don’t let you control
the TOS). Not all values of TOS are legal or meaningful - see the
IP spec for definitions. Useful values are probably ‘-t 16’ (low
delay) and ‘-t 8’ (high throughput).

-v Verbose output. Received ICMP packets other than TIME_EXCEEDED
and UNREACHABLEs are listed.

-w Set the time (in seconds) to wait for a response to a probe (de-
fault 3 sec.).

This program attempts to trace the route an IP packet would follow to
some internet host by launching UDP probe packets with a small ttl (time
to live) then listening for an ICMP "time exceeded" reply from a gateway.
We start our probes with a ttl of one and increase by one until we get an
ICMP "port unreachable" (which means we got to "host") or hit a max
(which defaults to 30 hops & can be changed with the -m flag). Three
probes (changed with -q flag) are sent at each ttl setting and a line is
printed showing the ttl, address of the gateway and round trip time of
each probe. If the probe answers come from different gateways, the ad-
dress of each responding system will be printed. If there is no response
within a 3 sec. timeout interval (changed with the -w flag), a "*" is
printed for that probe.

We don’t want the destination host to process the UDP probe packets so
the destination port is set to an unlikely value (if some clod on the
destination is using that value, it can be changed with the -p flag).

A sample use and output might be:

[yak 71]% traceroute nis.nsf.net.
traceroute to nis.nsf.net (35.1.1.48), 30 hops max, 56 byte packet
1 helios.ee.lbl.gov (128.3.112.1) 19 ms 19 ms 0 ms
2 lilac-dmc.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.216.1) 39 ms 39 ms 19 ms
3 lilac-dmc.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.216.1) 39 ms 39 ms 19 ms
4 ccngw-ner-cc.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.136.23) 39 ms 40 ms 39 ms
5 ccn-nerif22.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.168.22) 39 ms 39 ms 39 ms
6 128.32.197.4 (128.32.197.4) 40 ms 59 ms 59 ms
7 131.119.2.5 (131.119.2.5) 59 ms 59 ms 59 ms
8 129.140.70.13 (129.140.70.13) 99 ms 99 ms 80 ms
9 129.140.71.6 (129.140.71.6) 139 ms 239 ms 319 ms
10 129.140.81.7 (129.140.81.7) 220 ms 199 ms 199 ms
11 nic.merit.edu (35.1.1.48) 239 ms 239 ms 239 ms

Note that lines 2 & 3 are the same. This is due to a buggy kernel on the
2nd hop system - lbl-csam.arpa - that forwards packets with a zero ttl (a
bug in the distributed version of 4.3 BSD). Note that you have to guess
what path the packets are taking cross-country since the NSFNet (129.140)
doesn’t supply address-to-name translations for its NSSes.

A more interesting example is:

[yak 72]% traceroute allspice.lcs.mit.edu.
traceroute to allspice.lcs.mit.edu (18.26.0.115), 30 hops max
1 helios.ee.lbl.gov (128.3.112.1) 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms
2 lilac-dmc.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.216.1) 19 ms 19 ms 19 ms
3 lilac-dmc.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.216.1) 39 ms 19 ms 19 ms
4 ccngw-ner-cc.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.136.23) 19 ms 39 ms 39 ms
5 ccn-nerif22.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.168.22) 20 ms 39 ms 39 ms
6 128.32.197.4 (128.32.197.4) 59 ms 119 ms 39 ms
7 131.119.2.5 (131.119.2.5) 59 ms 59 ms 39 ms
8 129.140.70.13 (129.140.70.13) 80 ms 79 ms 99 ms
9 129.140.71.6 (129.140.71.6) 139 ms 139 ms 159 ms
10 129.140.81.7 (129.140.81.7) 199 ms 180 ms 300 ms
11 129.140.72.17 (129.140.72.17) 300 ms 239 ms 239 ms
12 * * *
13 128.121.54.72 (128.121.54.72) 259 ms 499 ms 279 ms
14 * * *
15 * * *
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 ALLSPICE.LCS.MIT.EDU (18.26.0.115) 339 ms 279 ms 279 ms

Note that the gateways 12, 14, 15, 16 & 17 hops away either don’t send
ICMP "time exceeded" messages or send them with a ttl too small to reach
us. 14 - 17 are running the MIT C Gateway code that doesn’t send "time
exceeded"s. God only knows what’s going on with 12.

The silent gateway 12 in the above may be the result of a bug in the
4.[23] BSD network code (and its derivatives): 4.x (x <= 3) sends an un-
reachable message using whatever ttl remains in the original datagram.
Since, for gateways, the remaining ttl is zero, the ICMP "time exceeded"
is guaranteed to not make it back to us. The behavior of this bug is
slightly more interesting when it appears on the destination system:

1 helios.ee.lbl.gov (128.3.112.1) 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms
2 lilac-dmc.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.216.1) 39 ms 19 ms 39 ms
3 lilac-dmc.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.216.1) 19 ms 39 ms 19 ms
4 ccngw-ner-cc.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.136.23) 39 ms 40 ms 19 ms
5 ccn-nerif35.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.168.35) 39 ms 39 ms 39 ms
6 csgw.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.133.254) 39 ms 59 ms 39 ms
7 * * *
8 * * *
9 * * *
10 * * *
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 rip.Berkeley.EDU (128.32.131.22) 59 ms ! 39 ms ! 39 ms !

Notice that there are 12 "gateways" (13 is the final destination) and ex-
actly the last half of them are "missing". What’s really happening is
that rip (a Sun-3 running Sun OS3.5) is using the ttl from our arriving
datagram as the ttl in its ICMP reply. So, the reply will time out on
the return path (with no notice sent to anyone since ICMP’s aren’t sent
for ICMP’s) until we probe with a ttl that’s at least twice the path
length. I.e., rip is really only 7 hops away. A reply that returns with
a ttl of 1 is a clue this problem exists. Traceroute prints a "!" after
the time if the ttl is <= 1. Since vendors ship a lot of obsolete (DEC’s
Ultrix, Sun 3.x) or non-standard (HPUX) software, expect to see this
problem frequently and/or take care picking the target host of your
probes. Other possible annotations after the time are !H, !N, !P (got a
host, network or protocol unreachable, respectively), !S or !F (source
route failed or fragmentation needed - neither of these should ever occur
and the associated gateway is busted if you see one). If almost all the
probes result in some kind of unreachable, traceroute will give up and
exit.

This program is intended for use in network testing, measurement and man-
agement. It should be used primarily for manual fault isolation. Be-
cause of the load it could impose on the network, it is unwise to use
traceroute during normal operations or from automated scripts.

AUTHOR
Implemented by Van Jacobson from a suggestion by Steve Deering. Debugged
by a cast of thousands with particularly cogent suggestions or fixes from
C. Philip Wood, Tim Seaver and Ken Adelman.