“mtr combines the functionality of the traceroute and ping programs in a single network diagnostic tool.” And it’s really cool.
Like ping, it sends “echo” packets from your machine to the target machine to measure latency and packet loss along the network path, but it continuously displays updated statistics in real time as it operates.
Like traceroute, it shows the names or IP addresses of each machine along the network path, also updating these statistics for each machine.
Here’s some (frozen) sample output from the ncurses mode (terminal mode) mtr:
My traceroute [v0.71]
exobox (0.0.0.0) Thu Dec 21 16:15:01 2006
Keys: Help Display mode Restart statistics Order of fields quit
Packets Pings
Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1. 0.0% 20 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.7 0.1
2. 0.0% 20 1.6 1.4 1.0 2.7 0.4
3. 0.0% 19 1.3 1.3 1.0 2.7 0.4
4. 10.0.0.25 0.0% 19 1.1 1.2 1.0 2.7 0.4
5. 219.142.10.17 0.0% 19 1.4 2.6 1.2 16.0 3.3
6. bj141-130-121.bjtelecom.net 0.0% 19 1.4 1.6 1.4 2.5 0.3
7. 202.97.57.221 0.0% 19 199.3 12.0 1.3 199.3 45.4
8. 202.97.37.9 0.0% 19 1.7 35.7 1.3 186.5 56.2
9. 202.97.53.146 0.0% 19 1.8 2.0 1.5 4.8 0.8
10. 202.97.61.50 0.0% 19 284.6 292.2 278.3 305.8 8.7
11. so-4-0-0.mpr2.lax9.us.above.net 15.8% 19 286.2 291.9 278.6 325.2 11.5
12. so-5-0-0.mpr1.iah1.us.above.net 15.8% 19 313.2 323.8 311.3 340.5 8.6
13. so-5-3-0.cr1.dfw2.us.above.net 5.3% 19 319.6 331.1 314.1 404.6 20.3
14. so-0-0-0.cr2.dfw2.us.above.net 11.1% 19 696.0 718.7 693.3 797.2 33.7
15. so-3-1-0.cr2.dca2.us.above.net 36.8% 19 347.4 354.9 342.5 368.7 8.6
16. so-0-1-0.mpr1.lhr3.uk.above.net 11.1% 19 421.5 423.6 411.1 438.2 7.8
17. so-1-0-0.mpr3.ams1.nl.above.net 11.1% 19 433.9 438.9 422.4 514.1 22.0
18. DutchDSL.above.net 33.3% 19 423.1 432.7 418.7 463.0 11.4
19. ge-0-1-0-v189.rtr1.ams-rb.io.nl 27.8% 19 405.8 414.7 398.2 434.6 11.6
20. 213.196.40.242 23.5% 18 404.8 418.1 399.9 485.8 21.9
Looking at the Avg column (units in ms), the above output shows that my network packets pass through Beijing Telecom’s routers to the U.S., then to the U.K., and finally to their destination in the Netherlands. A large latency increase occurs between lines 9 and 10 (presumably leaving P.R. China), and another between lines 13 and 16 (U.S. to U.K.).
mtr has some interesting display modes besides the above, where it shows the latency of each packet graphically according to a dynamic scale. In this way, the above points of really large latency can be easily detected.
mtr can be obtained from the mtr website, or it can be installed in Debian/Ubuntu by:
# apt-get install mtr-tiny
or
# apt-get install mtr
for the ncurses or X11 versions, respectively, although mtr-tiny appears to be installed by default in the Debian and Ubuntu machines I have tested. So you may already have it.
One reply on “MTR as a combined traceroute and ping tool”
Hi, looking all over for more documentation for MTR, you have offered the best explaination for my purposes so far, thanks for this.
Also, i ran this and got these on the first two hops.
Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
0.0% 100 0.6 60.5 0.3 2064. 293.2
0.0% 100 2.4 83.2 1.8 1912. 272.3
does this mean that the first two hops are unstable, i.e they can have low ping and high ping?
hope this makes sense,
thanks.