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traceroute(8)
NAME
traceroute - Prints the route that packets take to a network host
SYNOPSIS
/usr/sbin/traceroute [-A] [-a] [-c stoptime] [-d] [-f] [-g gateway] [-G
@addr1@addr2...] [-h server] [-i initial_ttl] [-k] [-l] [-m max_ttl] [-N]
[-n] [-p port] [-Q maxquit] [-q nqueries] [-r] [-S] [-s source_addr] [-t
tos] [-v] [-V version] [-w waittime] host [packetsize]
OPTIONS
Additional traceroute options are:
-A Looks up the AS-number (Autonomous System) for each hop's network
address at the whois server specified by the -h option.
-a If the destination host has multiple addresses, traceroute probes all
addresses if this option is set. Normally only the first address as
returned by the resolver is attempted.
-c stoptime
Specifies a delay (in seconds) to pause between probe packets. This
may be necessary if the final destination is a router that does not
accept undeliverable packets in bursts.
-d Enables socket debugging.
-f Disables IP fragmentation. If the given packetsize is too big to be
handled unfragmented by a machine along the route, a "fragmentation
needed" status is returned and the indicator !F is printed. If a
gateway returns the value of the proper MTU size to be used, traceroute
decreases the packet size automatically to this new value. If the
proper MTU size is not returned, traceroute chooses a shorter packet
size.
-g gateway
[IPv4 only] Enables the IP LSRR (Loose Source Record Route) option.
This is useful for asking how somebody else, at the specified gateway,
reaches a particular target.
-G @addr1@addr2...
[IPv6 only] Specifies the source route for packets to travel. The
route consists of one or more IPv6 node names or addresses. Use the at
character (@) to separate multiple addresses. You can specify up to 10
addresses.
-h server
Specifies the name or IP address of the whois server that is contacted
for the AS-number lookup, if the -A option is given.
-i initial_ttl
Sets the starting time-to-live value to initial_ttl, to override the
default value of 1. Effectively this skips processing for those
intermediate hosts that are less than initial_ttl hops away.
-k Keeps the connection to the whois server permanently open. This makes
lookups considerably quicker because connection setup for each
individual lookup is not necessary. However, all whois servers do not
support this feature.
-l Prints the value of the ttl field in each received packet (this can be
used to help detect asymmetric routing).
-m max_ttl
Sets the max time-to-live (max number of hops) used in outgoing probe
packets. The default is 30 hops, which is the same default used for
TCP connections.
-N [IPv4 only] Displays the network name for each hop. If a DNS/BIND
resolver cannot be reached, network names are retrieved just from the
/etc/networks file only.
-n Prints hop IP addresses numerically rather than both symbolically and
numerically. This saves a nameserver address-to-name lookup for each
gateway found on the path. It also prevents a reverse lookup for
numeric dotted quad addresses given on the command line (destination
host, or -g gateway addresses).
-p port
Sets the base UDP port number used in probes (default is 33434). The
traceroute command presumes that nothing is listening on UDP ports base
to base+nhops-1 at the destination host (so an ICMP "port unreachable"
message is returned to terminate the route tracing). If another
process is listening on a port in the default range, use this option to
pick an unused port range.
-Q maxquit
Stops probing this hop after maxquit consecutive timeouts are detected.
The default value is 5. Useful in combination with -S if you have
specified a big nqueries probe count.
-q nqueries
Sets the number of probes launched at each ttl setting (default is 3).
-r Bypasses the normal routing tables and sends 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 (for example, after the
interface was dropped by routed(8) or gated(8)).
-S Prints a per-hop minimum/average/maximum rtt (round-trip time)
statistics summary. This suppresses the per-probe rtt and ttl
reporting. For better statistics you need to increase the default
nqueries probe count. See also the -Q option.
-s source_addr
Uses the following IP address (which must be given as an IP number, not
a hostname) as the source address in outgoing probe packets. On hosts
with more than one IP address, use this option to force the source
address to be something other than the IP address of the interface on
which the probe packet is sent. If the IP address is not one of this
machine's interface addresses, an error is returned and nothing is
sent.
-t tos
Sets 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. Use this option to determine if different types-of-service result
in different paths. Not all values of TOS are legal or meaningful -
see the IP specification for definitions. Useful values are probably
-t 16 (low delay) and -t 8 (high throughput).
-v Produces verbose output. Lists any received ICMP packets other than
"time exceeded" and "unreachable".
-V version
Specifies the Internet Protocol (IP) version number to enable the
resolver to return the correct address. Use the -V 4 option if you
want to issue a traceroute command to a host name (not IP address) that
has both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and you want to trace the route to the
IPv4 address.
-w waittime
Sets the time (in seconds) to wait for a response to a probe. The
default is 3 seconds.
DESCRIPTION
The Internet is a large and complex aggregation of network hardware,
connected together by gateways. The traceroute command tracks the route
packets follow from gateway to gateway. The command uses the IP protocol
`time to live' field and attempts to elicit an ICMP "time exceeded"
response from each gateway along the path to a particular host.
The only mandatory parameter is the destination host name or IP address.
The default probe datagram length is either 38 bytes (IPv4) or 72 bytes
(IPv6), but you can increase this by specifying a packet size (in bytes)
after the destination host name. This is useful when the -f option is given
for MTU discovery along the route. You should start with the maximum
packet size for your own network interface (if the given value is even
bigger, traceroute attempts to select a more appropriate value). If no
packet size is given when using the -f option, traceroute determines the
initial MTU automatically.
To track the route of an IP packet, traceroute launches UDP probe packets
with a small ttl (time to live) and then listens for an ICMP "time
exceeded" reply from a gateway. Probes start with a ttl of one and
increase by one until either an ICMP "port unreachable" is returned
(indicating that the packet reached the host) or the maximum number of hops
is exceeded (the default is 30 hops and can be changed with the -m option).
At each ttl setting, traceroute launches three probes (you can change the
number with the -q option) and prints a line showing the ttl, address of
the gateway, and round trip time of each probe. If the probe answers come
from different gateways, traceroute prints the address of each responding
system. If there is no response within a 3 second timeout interval (which
you can change with the -w option), an asterisk (*) is printed for that
probe.
To prevent the destination host from processing the UDP probe packets, the
destination port is set to an unlikely value. You can change the
destination port value with the -p option, if necessary.
SPECIAL ANNOTATIONS
Other possible annotations after the time are:
!H Host is unreachable.
!N Network is unreachable.
!P Protocol is unreachable.
!F Fragmentation needed.
This indicator may show up if the -f command line option is being used,
and the associated gateway requires further fragmentation. In case the
desired new MTU size is known, it is indicated.
!S Source route failed.
This should not occur under normal circumstances and the associated
gateway might be broken if you see one.
!T Host or network is unreachable for the given tos.
!U Destination is unreachable.
This indicator is printed for some of the new unreachable subcodes as
defined in RFC 1812.
!A Some routers fail to generate an ICMP "port unreachable" message, but
send an ICMP "time exceeded" message instead if they are the target
host. The indicator is printed if this is detected.
!G Some routers erroneously generate ICMP "port unreachable" instead of
"time exceeded" if they are specified as loose source route gateway
hosts. The indicator is printed if this is detected.
If all the probes result in an unreachable status, traceroute stops sending
probes and exits.
TTL INDICATION
(ttl=n!)
This indicates that the ttl value in the ICMP "time exceeded" packet
that we received was unexpected. We expected some initial value, for
example, the number of routers between our system and another system.
In other words, if the path from hop 5 to us is the same as the path
from us to hop 5, we expect to receive a ttl value of 4.
There are several common initial values for ICMP ttls: 255, 60, 59, 30
and 29. 4.3 tahoe BSD and Cisco routers use 255, Proteon routers use
either 59 or 29 depending on software release, several other
implementations use 60 and 30. Tru64 UNIX uses an initial ttl of 64.
The traceroute command checks against all of these, making it hard to
detect some small routing asymmetries. If you want to see the ttl
values in all the packets, use the -l option.
NOTES
This program is intended for use in network testing, measurement and
management. It should be used primarily for manual fault isolation.
Because of the load it could impose on the network, do not use traceroute
during normal operations or from automated scripts.
By default, traceroute tries to resolve destination host names as an IPv6
address. If that fails, it resolves the host name as an IPv4 address. You
can override this behavior with the -V option.
EXAMPLES
1. The following command traces the route a packet takes from localhost
to the host nis.nsf.net:
localhost> 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 and 3 are identical. This is due to a bug in the
kernel on the 2nd hop system, lbl-csam.arpa, that forwards packets
with a zero ttl (a bug in the distributed version of 4.3BSD). The
NSFNet (129.140) does not supply address-to-name translations for its
NSSes. Therefore, you cannot be certain of the path the packets take
cross-country.
2. The following is another example of output from the traceroute
command. Packets from localhost to the host allspice.lcs.mit.edu are
being traced:
localhost> 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 and 17 hops away either do not
send ICMP "time exceeded" messages or send them with a ttl too small
to reach localhost. Further investigation is required to determine
the cause. For example, by contacting the system administrators for
gateways 14 through 17, you could discover that these gateways are
running the MIT C Gateway code that does not send "time exceeded"
messages.
The silent gateway 12 in the example may be the result of a bug in the
4.[23]BSD network code (and its derivatives): 4.x (x <= 3) sends an
unreachable 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.
When this bug appears on the destination system it behaves as follows:
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 !
Note that there are 12 gateways (13 is the final destination) and the
last half of them are missing. What is happening is that the host rip
(a Sun-3 running Sun OS3.5) is using the ttl from our arriving
datagram as the ttl in its ICMP reply. The reply will time out on the
return path (with no notice sent to anyone since ICMPs are not sent
for ICMPs) until we probe with a ttl that is at least twice the path
length. This means that the host rip is really only 7 hops away.
A reply that returns with a ttl of 1 is a clue this problem exists.
The traceroute command prints a ! after the time if the ttl is less
than or equal to 1. Since many systems continue to run obsolete or
non-standard software, expect to see this problem frequently.
IPv6 Examples
In the following examples, the backslash and the continuation of output on
to a second line is for display purposes only. In actual output, the
information appears on a single line.)
# traceroute -n host1-v6
traceroute to host1-v6.corp.com (3ffe:1200:4110:3:a00:2bff:feb4:89c5), \
30 hops max, 24 byte packets
1 fe80::a00:2bff:fe2a:1ed3 130.86 ms 119.141 ms 119.14 ms
2 3ffe:1200:4110:1:a00:2bff:fe2d:2b2 126.014 ms 117.308 ms 116.33 ms
3 3ffe:1200:4110:3:a00:2bff:feb4:89c5 122.195 ms 135.882 ms 119.263 ms
# traceroute 3ffe:1200:4110:3:a00:2bff:feb4:89c5
traceroute to 3ffe:1200:4110:3:a00:2bff:feb4:89c5 \
(3ffe:1200:4110:3:a00:2bff:feb4:89c5), 30 hops max, 24 byte packets
1 fe80::a00:2bff:fe2a:1ed3 (fe80::a00:2bff:fe2a:1ed3) 123.046 ms \
114.258 ms 117.188 ms
2 host2-v6.corp.com (3ffe:1200:4110:1:a00:2bff:fe2d:2b2) 115.234 ms \
117.188 ms 116.287 ms
3 host1-v6.corp.com (3ffe:1200:4110:3:a00:2bff:feb4:89c5) 120.241 ms \
113.398 ms 120.24 ms
When the route has an IPv6 over IPv4 tunnel, traceroute views this as a
single hop. It prints the IPv6 addresses of the nodes at each end of a
tunnel only, and none of the intermediate IPv4 routers between the tunnel
source and destination. If a traceroute command over a tunnel interface
fails, run the command again and specify the tunnel's IPv4 destination
address.
The following command shows a trace across the 6Bone to tw4.es.net. Note
that the intermediate routers appear to drop every other message. A
probable reason for this is that the routers probably rate limit IPv6 ICMP
error messages to one per second. Rate limiting ICMP error messages is
valid behavior.
# traceroute tw4.es.net
traceroute to tw4.es.net (3ffe:780:40:1:a00:2bff:febc:e96c), \
30 hops max, 24 byte packets
1 gw1.ipv6.pa-x.dec.com (3ffe:1280:1000:1::f842:1428) 83.985 ms * 83.000 ms
2 3ffe:700:20:1::21 (3ffe:700:20:1::21) 108.399 ms * 112.305 ms
3 3ffe:780:40:1:a00:2bff:febc:e96c(3ffe:780:40:1:a00:2bff:febc:e96c) 124.023 ms\
134.766 ms 116.211 ms
The following example is a trace to yogi-gbl using 2000-byte messages, and
shows the effect of Path MTU Discovery on traceroute results:
# traceroute yogi-gbl 2000
traceroute to yogi-gbl (fec0:10:60:0:200:f8ff:fe40:d8e6), \
30 hops max, 2024 byte packets
1 a30rtr-gbl (fec0:10:30:0:200:f8ff:fe45:cfb2) 5.859 ms 3.906 ms 3.907 ms
2 fec0:10:20:0:a00:2bff:feb0:972d (fec0:10:20:0:a00:2bff:feb0:972d) 4.882 ms
3.906 ms 3.906 ms
3 * fec0:10:40:1::a0a:283c (fec0:10:40:1::a0a:283c) 6.836 ms 6.836 ms
4 yogi-gbl (fec0:10:60:0:200:f8ff:fe40:d8e6) 8.789 ms 8.789 ms 7.812 ms
Hops 1 and 2 are across Ethernet links that have a link MTU of 1500 bytes.
Hop 3 is across a configured tunnel with an MTU of 1280 bytes.
The 1500-byte message fragments were transmitted without error until they
hit the tunnel. The first fragment across hop 3 triggered a "message too
big" error, which in turn caused the sender to record a reduced Path MTU
for yogi-gbl. The sender sent all subsequent messages with smaller
fragments. The traceroute display shows that the first probe to the tunnel
was dropped, but all others succeeded.
SEE ALSO
Commands: netstat(1), ping(8)
Daemons: gated(8), routed(8)
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