traceroute trivia

nerdydadnerdydad Member Posts: 261
I happened upon a topic I had never really looked into, so, without a search, how does a traceroute work?

Comments

  • paul78paul78 Member Posts: 3,016 ■■■■■■■■■■
    An IP packet is send with increasing TTL set. As the TTL expires, the device that the packet traverses sends back a TTL expired message. The IP packet that is used can be either UDP, TCP, or ICMP. Different OS's may choose to use UDP or TCP depending on their implementation.

    That's from memory without a search icon_smile.gif Although, I should disclose that I am familiar with traceroute internals.
  • nerdydadnerdydad Member Posts: 261
    Wow, the second viewer got it. I was looking at traceroute in MPLS and realized I didn't know how a regular traceroute worked. I asked a few coworkers and they didn't know either. A bunch of really smart people here at TechExams for sure.
  • CodeBloxCodeBlox Member Posts: 1,363 ■■■■□□□□□□
    I never knew traceroute would encapsulate in tcp/udp. I always thought it was purely a layer 3 tool. I already knew that it sends ICMP packets with an increasing TTL for each subsequent hop. They talk about that in CCNA studies O_o
    Currently reading: Network Warrior, Unix Network Programming by Richard Stevens
  • paul78paul78 Member Posts: 3,016 ■■■■■■■■■■
    Yeah - I think a lot of Cisco network folks think that because that's how IOS does it. I think IOS use ICMP echo messages or something like that. As I recall, Windows uses ICMP as well.

    Most Linux and Unix use a traceroute implementation that uses UDP.

    One of the reasons that I prefer using TCP packets instead is that it will usually traverse firewalls which block UDP or ICMP echo.
  • nerdydadnerdydad Member Posts: 261
    CodeBlox wrote: »
    They talk about that in CCNA studies O_o

    Hmmm, I either missed that day or I learned it and forgotten it, which is the case for a lot information. If you don't use it, you lose it, especially when you keep cramming more info in.
  • RobertKaucherRobertKaucher Member Posts: 4,299 ■■■■■■■■■■
    After our conversation about this I have decided that I am going to write a trace route program in C# and in C as learning experiments. I've never needed to work at such a low level with network protocols so this will be good practice.
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