Continuing from the previous mturoute-related post, this is how the mturoute utility behaves when you start it in traceroute mode (with the -t flag):

• Similar to Windows tracert, it tries to find the successive hops in the path by sending ICMP echo packets with increasing values of TTL field.

Contrary to Cisco IOS and most Unix systems that send UDP packets to high-numbered ports, tracert uses ICMP echo packets.

• For each router found in the path (= source IP address in the ICMP TTL exceeded message), mturoute tries to find path MTU to that hop using the same algorithm as in the ping mode.
• During the bisecting phase, the mturoute does not print all the messages it prints in the ping mode, but just the cryptic signs (+/-/u/.) indicating its progress. Their meaning is documented in the previous post.
• After the path MTU to the router under investigation is measured, mturoute reports the router's IP address and path MTU.

A sample trace-mode printout is included below:

$ mturoute -t 10.0.3.3
mturoute to 10.0.3.3, 30 hops max, variable sized packets
* ICMP Fragmentation is not permitted. *
* Maximum payload is 10000 bytes. *
 1  --+---+++-+++-++  host: 10.0.0.1  max: 1500 bytes
 2  --.u+---.u+.u+---u+.u+.u+  host: 10.2.0.2  max: 1476 bytes
 3  --+---+-+++++++  host: 10.0.3.3  max: 1472 bytes

The second hop in the printout has an inbound access-list that blocks incoming ICMP packets. The mturoute thus reports receiving ICMP unreachable ('u') as well as ping timeouts ('.') as not every incoming packet is replied to due to ICMP rate-limiting in Cisco IOS.

Note: This article is part of You've asked for it series.