MTR(8) mtr MTR(8)
NAME
mtr - a network diagnostic tool
SYNOPSIS
mtr [-4|-6] [-F FILENAME] [--report] [--report-wide] [--xml] [--gtk] [--curses] [--raw]
[--csv] [--split] [--no-dns] [--show-ips] [-o FIELDS] [-y IPINFO] [--aslookup] [-i INTER‐
VAL] [-c COUNT] [-s PACKETSIZE] [-B BITPATTERN] [-Q TOS] [--mpls] [-a ADDRESS]
[-f FIRST-TTL] [-m MAX-TTL] [--udp] [--tcp] [-P PORT] [-Z TIMEOUT] [-M MARK] HOSTNAME
DESCRIPTION
mtr combines the functionality of the traceroute and ping programs in a single network
diagnostic tool.
As mtr starts, it investigates the network connection between the host mtr runs on and
HOSTNAME by sending packets with purposely low TTLs. It continues to send packets with
low TTL, noting the response time of the intervening routers. This allows mtr to print
the response percentage and response times of the internet route to HOSTNAME. A sudden
increase in packet loss or response time is often an indication of a bad (or simply over‐
loaded) link.
The results are usually reported as round-trip-response times in miliseconds and the per‐
centage of packetloss.
OPTIONS
-h, --help
Print the summary of command line argument options.
-v, --version
Print the installed version of mtr.
-4 Use IPv4 only.
-6 Use IPv6 only. (IPV4 may be used for DNS lookups).
-F FILENAME, --filename FILENAME
MISSING
-r, --report
This option puts mtr into report mode. When in this mode, mtr will run for the
number of cycles specified by the -c option, and then print statistics and exit.
This mode is useful for generating statistics about network quality. Note that
each running instance of mtr generates a significant amount of network traffic.
Using mtr to measure the quality of your network may result in decreased network
performance.
-w, --report-wide
This option puts mtr into wide report mode. When in this mode, mtr will not cut
hostnames in the report.
-x, --xml
Use this option to tell mtr to use the xml output format. This format is better
suited for automated processing of the measurement results.
-t, --curses
Use this option to force mtr to use the curses based terminal interface (if avail‐
able).
-g, --gtk
Use this option to force mtr to use the GTK+ based X11 window interface (if avail‐
able). GTK+ must have been available on the system when mtr was built for this to
work. See the GTK+ web page at http://www.gtk.org/ for more information about
GTK+.
-l, --raw
Use this option to tell mtr to use the raw output format. This format is better
suited for archival of the measurement results. It could be parsed to be presented
into any of the other display methods.
-C, --csv
MISSING
-p, --split
Use this option to set mtr to spit out a format that is suitable for a split-user
interface.
-n, --no-dns
Use this option to force mtr to display numeric IP numbers and not try to resolve
the host names.
-b, --show-ips
Use this option to tell mtr to display both the host names and numeric IP numbers.
In split mode this adds an extra field to the output. In report mode, there is
usually too little space to add the IPs, and they will be truncated. Use the wide
report (-w) mode to see the IPs in report mode.
-o FIELDS, --order FIELDS
Use this option to specify which fields to display and in which order. You may use
one or more space characters to separate fields.
Available fields:
┌──┬─────────────────────┐
│L │ Loss ratio │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│D │ Dropped packets │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│R │ Received packets │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│S │ Sent Packets │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│N │ Newest RTT(ms) │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│B │ Min/Best RTT(ms) │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│A │ Average RTT(ms) │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│W │ Max/Worst RTT(ms) │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│V │ Standard Deviation │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│G │ Geometric Mean │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│J │ Current Jitter │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│M │ Jitter Mean/Avg. │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│X │ Worst Jitter │
├──┼─────────────────────┤
│I │ Interarrival Jitter │
└──┴─────────────────────┘
Example: -o "LSD NBAW X"
-y n, --ipinfo n
MISSING
-z, --aslookup
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-i SECONDS, --interval SECONDS
Use this option to specify the positive number of seconds between ICMP ECHO
requests. The default value for this parameter is one second. The root user may
choose values between zero and one.
-c COUNT, --report-cycles COUNT
Use this option to set the number of pings sent to determine both the machines on
the network and the reliability of those machines. Each cycle lasts one second.
-s PACKETSIZE, --psize PACKETSIZE
This option sets the packet size used for probing. It is in bytes, inclusive IP
and ICMP headers.
If set to a negative number, every iteration will use a different, random packet
size up to that number.
-B NUM, --bitpattern NUM
Specifies bit pattern to use in payload. Should be within range 0 - 255. If NUM
is greater than 255, a random pattern is used.
-Q NUM, --tos NUM
Specifies value for type of service field in IP header. Should be within range 0 -
255.
-e, --mpls
Use this option to tell mtr to display information from ICMP extensions for MPLS
(RFC 4950) that are encoded in the response packets.
-a ADDRESS, --address ADDRESS
Use this option to bind the outgoing socket to ADDRESS, so that all packets will be
sent with ADDRESS as source address. NOTE that this option doesn't apply to DNS
requests (which could be and could not be what you want).
-f NUM, --first-ttl NUM
Specifies with what TTL to start. Defaults to 1.
-m NUM, --max-ttl NUM
Specifies the maximum number of hops (max time-to-live value) traceroute will
probe. Default is 30.
-u, --udp
Use UDP datagrams instead of ICMP ECHO.
-T, --tcp
Use TCP SYN packets instead of ICMP ECHO. PACKETSIZE is ignored, since SYN packets
can not contain data.
-P PORT, --port PORT
The target port number for TCP traces.
-Z SECONDS, --timeout SECONDS
The number of seconds to keep the TCP socket open before giving up on the connec‐
tion. This will only affect the final hop. Using large values for this, espe‐
cially combined with a short interval, will use up a lot of file descriptors.
-M MARK, --mark MARK
MISSING
ENVIRONMENT
mtr recognizes a few environment variables.
MTR_OPTIONS
This environment variable allows to specify options, as if they were passed on the
command line. It is parsed before reading the actual command line options, so that
options specified in MTR_OPTIONS are overriden by command-line options.
Example:
MTR_OPTIONS="-4 -c 1" mtr -6 localhost
would send one probe (because of -c 1) towards ::1 (because of -6, which overrides
the -4 passed in MTR_OPTIONS).
DISPLAY
Used for the GTK+ frontend.
BUGS
Some modern routers give a lower priority to ICMP ECHO packets than to other network traf‐
fic. Consequently, the reliability of these routers reported by mtr will be significantly
lower than the actual reliability of these routers.
CONTACT INFORMATION
For the latest version, see the mtr web page at http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/.
The mtr mailinglist was little used and is no longer active.
For patches, bug reports, or feature requests, please open an issue on GitHub at:
https://github.com/traviscross/mtr.
SEE ALSO
traceroute(8), ping(8) TCP/IP Illustrated (Stevens, ISBN 0201633469).
mtr July 12, 2014 MTR(8)
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