- MTR (software)
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MTR Developer(s) BitWizard Stable release 0.80 / July 13, 2010 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 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.
Contents
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
- 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
- ^ Upstream Provider Woes? Point the Ping of Blame. (enterpriseitplanet.com)
- ^ Cisco router configuration and troubleshooting By Mark Tripod (Google Books)
- ^ Linode Library: Diagnosing Network Issues with MTR
External links
Categories:- Free network-related software
- Network analyzers
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