Traceroute and My Traceroute (MTR) diagnostic tools for networks that provide helpful information about the route and latency of packets while traveling across an IP network. MTR includes both traceroute and ping programs combined into one.
If you suspect that you are having trouble with latency or other network issues, our network engineers will most likely first request that a bi-directional, 100-count MTR completed by you. This will allow them to discover which routers are being utilized in your network request from your server to your remote location as well as from your remote location to your server. The 100-count MTR will display the average time span for round-trip ICMP (ping) traffic to each router as well as the amount of packet loss for each individual router.
See below for the procedures for obtaining MTR data on Linux, MacOS and Windows machines:
Note: You may have to combine more than one method below in order to retrieve and share the output to and from your local computer and server.
Windows:
Traceroute:
To perform a traceroute without ping data, follow the steps below:
Open your Start menu
Click on Run - If Run is not present, you can locating with a search
Type cmd and press the Enter key to begin a command prompt.
At the prompt, type tracert <hostname.com/IP> and press your Enter key. For example, tracert google.com or tracert 8.8.8.8
To copy the output, right click anywhere in the cmd window and select Mark. Use your mouse to select the text you want to copy and then right-click again with your mouse. Paste the copied output by pressing Ctrl + V on your keyboard. You may also press the Enter key to copy all of the output and then paste by pressing Ctrl + V.
MTR:
All Windows systems utilize a program called WinMTR to obtain MTR data. Below are steps to first, install and second, to obtain bi-directional MTRs using WinMTR. Follow the instructions below on both your PC (or the PC experiencing connectivity issues to/from the server) and your Windows server.
In your browser, navigate to
http://winmtr.net/download-winmtr/ and select the download link next to the corresponding bit version of your program. Note: Most VPS.net services utilize a 64-bit operating system.
Follow the directions to download the WinMTR .zip file.
In Windows Explorer, right click the WinMTR .zip file and select “Extract All…” to extract the entire application file.
Double click to launch the WinMTR program.
In the “Host:” field:
If running from your PC, enter the hostname or IP address of your Windows server and click Start. Let the MTR run until 100 appears in both the Sent and Recv columns.
If running from your Windows Server, enter the IP address of your PC. Note: you can obtain your local IP address by performing a Google search for “IP”, or by visiting a site such as
http://whatismyip.org/. Let the MTR run until 100 appears in both the Sent and Recv columns then click Stop.
Select Copy HTML to clipboard to copy the and press Ctrl+V to paste the results into the support ticket that you have created.
Linux:
Downloading and Installing MTR and traceroute:
Most Linux distributions come with traceroute and MTR installed by default. To use them, access your server’s command line through your SSH connection.
If your Linux machine does not have traceroute or MTR installed, you can download them through your distribution’s software package manger. Follow the steps below based on your server’s Linux distribution.
Debian/Ubuntu Systems:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install traceroute
apt-get install mtr-tiny
CentOS/Red Hat Systems:
yum install mtr
yum install traceroute
Using MTR and traceroute:
Once the MTR and traceroute utilities are installed, you should be able to use them across most Linux distributions.
To run traceroute on your Linux server, type traceroute <IP address of your local computer or test location> and press Enter to run the traceroute. For example: traceroute 8.8.8.8
To run a 100-count MTR on your Linux server, type mtr -c100 -r <IP address of your local computer or test location> and press Enter. For example: mtr -c100 -r 8.8.8.8.
Note: It will look like nothing is happening for a couple of minutes, but be patient. The -c100 and -r flags enable MTR to perform a 100-count test and present it in a report form so you can easily copy and paste the output into your ticket.
MAC:
Traceroute
Launch Network Utility.
Note: you can do this through Spotlight by typing “Network Utility” and hitting the enter key.
Click the tab titled ‘Traceroute’.
Enter your server’s IP address or the server hostname (if it is a fully qualified domain name) and click ‘Trace’.
To copy the output, click on the box below and press ⌘ + A, followed by ⌘ + C.
MTR
Open the .pkg file by using a secondary click and selecting ‘Open’ from the menu. Alternatively, select the .pkg and select File > Open.
Follow the prompts to finish installing MTR.
Once finished, launch Terminal. Note: this is found in Applications > Utilities > Terminal. Alternatively, you can search Spotlight to find and launch Terminal.
On the terminal, type sudo /usr/local/sbin/mtr -c100 -r <IP address or hostname> and hit enter. Note: you must have administrator privileges to run MTR.
Enter your password and press ‘Enter’. Note: it will look like nothing is entered while typing your password.
Note: To permanently save the alias, run this:
# open ~/.bash_profile
# add to the .bash_profile:
# alias mtr=/usr/local/sbin/mtr