MTR (My traceroute) allows you to constantly poll a remote server. This diagnostic tool combines the ‘traceroute’ and ‘ping’ function. It represents an evolution of the traceroute command by providing a greater data sample, as if augmenting traceroute with ping output, and is useful for seeing how a server’s latency and performance changes over time.
Running a traceroute is different for each Operating System. Here are the steps for Windows, Mac OS and Linux:
To install MTR on Windows:
- Download the latest version of WinMTR.
- You will have a .zip file containing two folders: WinMTR-32 and WinMTR-64
- Each folder contains two files: WinMTR.exe and README.txt
- Extract the WinMTR.exe that corresponds to your platform (32 or 64 bit) and run the file.
To run WinMTR on Windows:
- Start WinMTR.
- Write the name or IP of the host (e.g. hetzner.co.za or 197.189.196.146)
- Press the Options button to configure ping size, maximum hops and ping interval (the defaults are OK).
- Push the Start button and wait.
- Copy or export the results in text or HTML format. The results should look similar to this:
