MTR (software)

MTR

Developer(s)	BitWizard
Stable release	0.80 / July 13, 2010; 15 months ago (2010-07-13)
Written in	C
Operating system	Unix-like
Type	Network
License	GNU General Public License Version 2
Website	bitwizard.nl/mtr/

WinMTR

Developer(s)	Appnor
Stable release	0.92 / January 31, 2011; 8 months ago (2011-01-31)
Written in	C
Operating system	Windows
Type	Network
License	GNU General Public License Version 2
Website	winmtr.net

MTR is computer software 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.

History

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]

Fundamentals

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) 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.^[3]

Example

This example shows MTR running on Linux tracing a route from the host machine (example.lan) to a web server at Yahoo! (p25.www.re2.yahoo.com) across the Level3 network.

                             My traceroute  [v0.71]
            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

WinMTR

WinMTR is an equivalent of mtr for Windows developed by Appnor. Functionally it is very similar, although it does not actually share any code in common with mtr due to the major diffences between the *nix and Windows network stacks.

See also

Free software portal

• traceroute
• ping
• PathPing - a network utility supplied in Windows NT and beyond that combines the functionality of ping with that of traceroute (or tracert).

References

1. ^ Upstream Provider Woes? Point the Ping of Blame. (enterpriseitplanet.com)
2. ^ Cisco router configuration and troubleshooting By Mark Tripod (Google Books)
3. ^ Linode Library: Diagnosing Network Issues with MTR

External links

• MTR, BitWizard's MTR page with Unix downloads.
• WinMTR, the equivalent of MTR for Windows platforms.