1. Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide
  2. Fault Management
  3. Traceroute Command

Traceroute Command

The system can trace the route of an IP packet to an Internet host by sending probe packets and listening to responses from gateways along the route. Use the traceroute command to see each host route and the round trip time of packets received from each host in a route for diagnostic purposes.

The traceroute command sends probe packets that start with a maximum time-to-live (TTL) value of one. The system listens for an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) error message in response to the TTL expiry, and records the source that sent the ICMP error message. The system repeats this process and increments the TTL value by 1 for each hop in the route to the final destination.

The traceroute command returns the following information, which allows tracing the packet route to its destination.

  • TTL value
  • IP address of each host along the route
  • Amount of time that it takes for each probe packet to travel to each host in the route
Notes:
  • Unless otherwise specified, the system sends three probe packets to each host.
  • The traceroute command is only available in software versions of the Oracle Communications Session Border Controller, for example, Server Edition (SE) and Virtual Machine Edition (VME). For more information on supported platforms, see "Platform Support."

For traceroute command syntax and arguments, see "Traceroute Command Specifications."

Examples

The following example traces the route to IP address 172.30.0.167, identifying each host in the route and the amount of time that it takes for each of three probe packets to travel to each host. The first three probe packets reach the host at 172.44.0.1 in times ranging from less than one to a little over two milliseconds. The next three probe packets reach the route destination at IP address 172.30.0.167 all in less than one millisecond. 

ORACLE# traceroute 172.30.0.167
traceroute to 172.30.0.167
1 172.44.0.1 (0.669003 ms) (2.140045 ms) (2.290964 ms)
2 172.30.0.167 (0.25602 ms) (0.219822 ms) (0.604868 ms)

The following example traces the route to IP address 172.30.0.167 but specifies the use of 4 probe packets instead of the default of 3. 

ORACLE traceroute 172.30.0.167 probes 4 
traceroute to 172.30.0.167 
1 172.44.0.1 (0.549003 ms) (1.180045 ms) (2.920584 ms) (2.48541 ms) 
2 172.30.0.167 (0.25802 ms) (0.220822 ms) (0.454868 ms) (0.387574)

The following example specifies that the traceroute command is issued to the IP address over the user-specified network interface private and VLAN 123. 

ORACLE traceroute 10.1.2.6 intf-name:vlan private:123 
traceroute to 10.1.2.6 
1 10.1.2.6 (0.265121 ms) (0.599080 ms) (0.0184195 ms)

The following example specifies that the wait for a response timeout is 4 seconds. The default value is three seconds. 

ORACLE traceroute 10.1.2.6 timeout 4 
traceroute to 10.1.2.6 
1 10.1.2.6 (0.265121 ms) (0.199080 ms) (0.0284195 ms)

The following example specifies that the traceroute starts at a user-specified source IP address of 172.20.22.31 to a destination IP address of 10.25.2.10. 

ORACLE traceroute 172.20.22.31 source-ip 10.25.2.10 
traceroute to 172.20.22.31 
172.20.22.31 (0.284121 ms) (0.499770 ms) (0.084595 ms)

Traceroute Command Specifications

The traceroute command traces the route of an IP packet to an Internet host by sending probe packets with small maximum time-to-live (TTL) values and listening to responses from gateways along the path. This diagnostic command provides the route (path) and the round trip times of packets received from each host in a route.

The traceroute command works by sending probe packets starting with a maximum time-to-live (TTL) value of one, listening for an ICMP error message in response to the TTL expiry, and recording the source that sent it. This process is repeated by incrementing the TTL value by 1 each time until the final destination is reached. This information allows the path to be traced for the packet to reach its destination.

Syntax

traceroute <destination-address> <options>

Arguments

<destination-address> — Specifies the destination IP address for the route to be traced.

<intf-name:vla> — Specifies the network interface and VLAN to use.

<max_ttl> — Specifies the maximum number of hops before timeout.
  • Default — 30
  • Values — Min: 1 / Max: none

<probes> — Specifies the number of probes to send.

<source-ip> — Specifies the source IP address from which to trace the route to the destination IP address.

<timeout> — Specifies the maximum time (in seconds) to wait for a response.
  • Default — 3
  • Values — Min: 1 / Max: none

Mode

Superuser

Example

ORACLE# traceroute 172.30.0.167 probes 4
traceroute to 172.30.0.167
1 172.44.0.1 (0.669003 ms) (2.140045 ms) (2.290964 ms) (2.40891 ms) 
2 172.30.0.167 (0.25602 ms) (0.219822 ms) (0.604868 ms) (0.398874)