Making a bidirectional MTR

Description

MTR is a network diagnostic tool. Leaseweb support may ask you for a bidirectional MTR when necessary.

Contents

About MTR

An MTR is a tracker for the packages that travel from one location to another—displaying where it passes, and the possible origin of a delay. It diagnoses and isolates networking errors. As we need both routes to determine the delay, we request for bidirectional MTR. MTR is different from traceroute as it combines the information of traceroute and ping, but unlike traceroute, is not limited to 3 packets per hop. The main advantage of MTR is that it will shows you the packet loss per hop, which allows you to determine if there is a problem along the route the traffic takes, or only on the final hop to the server itself.

The MTR command should be run on the server and on the client computer (for example, your PC at home). If you do not know your IP address of your PC, you can visit www.whatismyip.com to find your IP details that required to run the MTR.

Making a MTR

We ask for the following two options to be used when running the command:

not to resolve names;
to create the MTR with at least 100 packets.

Windows

On a Windows PC or server, you can download the application WinMTR.

Information

At least 100 packets are required, and Resolve names must be turned off in the Options menu.

With WinMTR you can perform an MTR by filling in the IP you would like to reach in the Host box and press Start.

7831566

Linux

MTR is by default not installed on a Linux distribution system. Please install the program before you can perform the steps.

Open a terminal and run the “mtr -n x.x.x.x” command (without quotes) to get a running MTR, or for a static output with 100 packets: “mtr -n -r -c 100 x.x.x.x”.

Replace x.x.x.x with the IP address you want to run the MTR to. See the example below.

Linux: traceroute

johndoe@server:~$ mtr -n -r -c 100 85.17.134.129
HOST: server                     Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1. 85.17.150.60                  0.0%   100    0.3   1.8   0.3  53.8   6.6
  2. 85.17.129.210                 0.0%   100    0.3   0.6   0.3  15.9   1.7
  3. 85.17.134.129                 0.0%   100    0.2   0.2   0.2   0.3   0.0

Mac

MTR is by default not installed on MacOS. Before you can use your Mac to run an MTR you should install the following:

Homebrew. An installation guide can be found here.
MTR: If Homebrew is installed you can use the following command to install MTR
```
brew install mtr
```

On your Mac, open a terminal and run the “mtr -n x.x.x.x” command (without quotes) to get a running MTR, or for a static output with 100 packets: “mtr -n -r -c 100 x.x.x.x”.

Replace x.x.x.x with the IP address you want to run the MTR to. See the example below.

MacOS: traceroute

macbook:~ johndoe$ mtr -n -r -c 100 85.17.134.129
HOST: macbook                     Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1. 85.17.150.60                  0.0%   100    0.3   1.8   0.3  53.8   6.6
  2. 85.17.129.210                 0.0%   100    0.3   0.6   0.3  15.9   1.7
  3. 85.17.134.129                 0.0%   100    0.2   0.2   0.2   0.3   0.0

Packet loss within the Leaseweb network

It can happen that you see packet loss on Leaseweb routers. This does not indicate any loss of service as we have ping limiters on our routers that can cause this behavior. This packet loss is only related to packets to the router. Thus, packets through the router are not affected.

To determine if the loss you are seeing is real or due to rate limiting, check the subsequent hop. If that hop displays a loss of 0.0%, then it is because of ICMP rate limiting, and not an actual loss.

Making a bidirectional MTR