Perhaps the question required a more detailed answer. We have discussed
this numerous times, but here it is again....
The results provided by trace-route are rough round-trip measurements to
each router in the path to a destination and finally a measurement also to
the actual destination. With most implementations, you will see three
results for each router and the destination. The timing measurements
account for processing time at the recipients in addition to raw
propagation delay. Trace-route can be used as a rough estimate of the time
to reach destinations. It is most useful, however, as a method for checking
the path to a remote destination.
With Unix and Cisco IOS and "real" operating systems, this is how
trace-route works:
A trace-route packet is a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) "probe" packet sent
to port 33434 or some other large UDP port. Trace-route works by taking
advantage of the ICMP error message a router generates when a packet
exceeds its time-to-live (TTL) value. TTL is a field in the IP header of an
IP packet.
Trace-route starts by sending a UDP probe packet with a TTL of one. This
causes the first router in the path to discard the probe and send back a
destination unreachable, time-exceeded ICMP message. One of the first
things an IP router does is decrement the TTL (which is essentially a hop
count value). If the decrement causes the time-to-live to reach zero, then
the packet is dead (discarded).
The trace-route command sends several probes, increasing the TTL by one
after three packets have been sent at each TTL value. For example, it sends
three packets with TTL equal to 1, then three packets with TTL equal to 2,
then three packets with TTL equal to 3, and so on, until the destination
host is reached or a configured maximum number of tries (usually 30) is
reached.
Each router in the path decrements the TTL. The router that decrements the
TTL to 0 sends back the time-exceeded message. The final destination host
sends back a destination unreachable, port-unreachable ICMP message,
because UDP port 33434 is not a well-known port. This process allows a user
to see a message from every router in the path to the destination, and a
message from the destination.
Unfortunately, trace-route is not dependable. Some routers do not send back
time-exceeded messages. Some routers incorrectly use the TTL of the
incoming packet to send the time-exceeded message, which does not work.
Also, some end systems do not send the port-unreachable message which means
that trace-route waits for a long time before timing out. Finally, some
service providers purposely change the results of trace-route to hide
internal hops.
Microsoft trace-route also makes use of the IP TTL feature and router
behavior with respect to TTL. Microsoft trace-route sends an ICMP ping
rather than an UDP probe packet, however. The only real difference is that
when the message reaches the final destination, the destination normally
responds to the ping, rather than sending a port unreachable message.
Priscilla
At 01:07 PM 6/21/01, ElephantChild wrote:
>On Thu, 21 Jun 2001, cisco guru wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> > When I do a traceroute www.cisco.com, I get a reply with 3 timings as in
> > 13 193 ms 176 ms 181 ms www.cisco.com [198.133.219.25]
> >
> > What does 193ms 176ms and 181 ms stand for? SRTT??
> > Would someone kindly explain?
>
>% man traceroute
>...
> This program attempts to trace the route an IP packet
> would follow to some internet host by launching UDP probe
> packets with a small ttl (time to live) then listening for
> an ICMP "time exceeded" reply from a gateway. We start
> our probes with a ttl of one and increase by one until we
> get an ICMP "port unreachable" (which means we got to
> "host") or hit a max (which defaults to 30 hops & can be
> changed with the -m flag). Three probes (change with -q
> flag) are sent at each ttl setting and a line is printed
> showing the ttl, address of the gateway and *round trip
> time of each probe.*
>
>(emphasis mine).
>
>--
>"Someone approached me and asked me to teach a javascript course. I was
>about to decline, saying that my complete ignorance of the subject made
>me unsuitable, then I thought again, that maybe it doesn't, as driving
>people away from it is a desirable outcome." --Me
________________________
Priscilla Oppenheimer
http://www.priscilla.com
Message Posted at:
http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=9399&t=9307
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