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  Remstats was written by
  Thomas Erskine at the
  CRC in Canada and now
  at SourceWorks.

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traceroute

Usage:

2.9.2tee0.0: Usage: traceroute [-adnruvAMOQ] [-w wait] [-S start_ttl] [-m max_ttl] [-p port#] [-q nqueries] [-g gateway] [-t tos] [-s src_addr] [-g router] host [data size]
      -a: Abort after 10 consecutive drops
      -d: Socket level debugging
      -g: Use this gateway as an intermediate hop (uses LSRR)
      -S: Set start TTL (default 1)
      -m: Set maximum TTL (default 30)
      -n: Report IP addresses only (not hostnames)
      -p: Use an alternate UDP port
      -q: Set the number of queries at each TTL (default 3)
      -r: Set Dont Route option
      -s: Set your source address
      -t: Set the IP TOS field (default 0)
      -u: Use microsecond timestamps
      -v: Verbose
      -w: Set timeout for replies (default 5 sec)
      -A: Report AS# at each hop (from GRR)
      -M: Do RFC1191 path MTU discovery
      -O: Report owner at each hop (from DNS)
      -P: Parallel probing
      -Q: Report delay statistics at each hop (min/avg+-stddev/max) (ms)
      -T: Terminator (line end terminator)
      -U: Go to next hop on any success

Description:

Hmm. I think that describes its use pretty well. What does it do? Oh. Well it sends UDP packets with the time-to-live set to 1, then 2 then 3 and so on. This causes the routers that these packets are sent through to complain after the requisite number of hops. I.E. the first router complains about the first packets, with TTL set to one, the second about the packets with TTL set to two etc. Traceroute catches the complaints and times how long it took. This not only shows you how your packets are getting to the destination, but sometimes, where the congestion is as well. There's a lots better explanation in the source, so if you want more, UTSL.

This version of traceroute is used in traceroute.cgi, which isn't required, just handy on occasion, and in do-traceroute, which you don't need unless you're curious about your routing and how it's changing over time. The only extra options that do-traceroute uses are the -A option to look up the ASN (Autonomous System Number) and the -O option to look up the DNS owner.


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Last updated Thu Jul 29 09:56:06 UTC 2004 by <terskine@users.sourceforge.net>.