June 2009 - WLUG - wlug.mailman3.com

Re: [Wlug] Time and Date Stamp on Traceroute?

by Chuck Anderson

On Sat, Jun 06, 2009 at 01:42:38PM -0400, E Johnson wrote: > Does anyone know a quick command I can use to add a time and date stamp to > traceroute? Is this not enough? date; traceroute foo > I need a quick app (nothing that generates a significant amount of network > traffic) --where I can enter one command in terminal which will display a > printout of a traceroute, to show the ISP or to show the tech in real-time > when he comes out. The one I send the ISP needs the time/date in order to be > effectively convincing to them. If the ISP is asking you for a traceroute, then they would know that no standard traceroute programs out there actually have a built-in date/time stamp functionality. "tracert" and "pathping" on Windows don't add a time stamp that I know of. Running "date" followed by "traceroute" should be enough. Put it in a shell script so you can invoke it as a single command if you want. There is a nicer traceroute for Linux called "Matt's Traceroute" or mtr. It prints some additional information like packet loss as well as a date/time at the top of the screen. It uses an ncurses full-screen interactive interface. > We're supposed to get 20,000 kb/s (up) here, and quite often, we're > not, even with very low internet use in the PCs I'm running here. > Even the download speed's choking... seems like something big right > close is often are clogging the pipe. Traceroute I'm doing is only > going from here to Cambridge. Traceroute is not the proper tool to ascertain the bandwidth available. Traceroute tells you which route the packets take, and the "latency" given by each hop is not an accurate indicator of anything really. Traceroute packets are often processed in software by the routers along the path, often at a lower priority and rate limited compared to "real" traffic that they route, so the numbers they give for latency are not useful, and certainly can't be used to tell you the bandwidth of a connection. Even traceroute packet loss doesn't necessarily indicate a problem, since the lower priority of the ICMP or UDP traceroute packets means they might get dropped intentionally if the router is busy processing real traffic. If you really want to test the performance of your connection, you need two well-defined endpoints, such as your PC and a server at your ISP, both running software designed for this purpose. Common software used for performance testing is ttcp, netperf, iperf. Here is some more useful information about the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_test

June 6, 2009

Re: [Wlug] Time and Date Stamp on Traceroute?

by J.R. Mauro

On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 1:42 PM, E Johnson<iris.gates(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Does anyone know a quick command I can use to add a time and date stamp to > traceroute? Traceroute-nanog. It may be hard to find the original source. Try looking for the debian package online, and on the right hand side of the website, there should be a source tarball. I tried finding the "aces.com" site where it's supposed to be available, but no such luck. I imaging the debian way is the way to go. > Man page for traceroute doesn't seem to have that option. > > Or is there a similar traceroute-type app that does incorporate this > function? > > I need a quick app (nothing that generates a significant amount of network > traffic) --where I can enter one command in terminal which will display a > printout of a traceroute, to show the ISP or to show the tech in real-time > when he comes out. The one I send the ISP needs the time/date in order to be > effectively convincing to them. We're supposed to get 20,000 kb/s (up) here, > and quite often, we're not, even with very low internet use in the PCs I'm > running here. Even the download speed's choking... seems like something big > right close is often are clogging the pipe. Traceroute I'm doing is only > going from here to Cambridge. > > I did install a couple of other traceroute-type apps (such as tcptraceroute) > but their man pages didn't seem to show this capability either. I liked > tcptraceroute because it has a "don't fragment" option. Would like to > time/date-stamp that. > > Thanks, > Liz J > > _______________________________________________ > Wlug mailing list > Wlug(a)mail.wlug.org > http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug > >

June 6, 2009

Time and Date Stamp on Traceroute?

by E Johnson

Does anyone know a quick command I can use to add a time and date stamp to traceroute? Man page for traceroute doesn't seem to have that option. Or is there a similar traceroute-type app that does incorporate this function? I need a quick app (nothing that generates a significant amount of network traffic) --where I can enter one command in terminal which will display a printout of a traceroute, to show the ISP or to show the tech in real-time when he comes out. The one I send the ISP needs the time/date in order to be effectively convincing to them. We're supposed to get 20,000 kb/s (up) here, and quite often, we're not, even with very low internet use in the PCs I'm running here. Even the download speed's choking... seems like something big right close is often are clogging the pipe. Traceroute I'm doing is only going from here to Cambridge. I did install a couple of other traceroute-type apps (such as tcptraceroute) but their man pages didn't seem to show this capability either. I liked tcptraceroute because it has a "don't fragment" option. Would like to time/date-stamp that. Thanks, Liz J

June 6, 2009