Matt's Traceroute (aka My Trace Route or MTR) is an application that combines traceroute and ping. With MTR, you can send packets from your local machine to a remote server and observe both the routing and network performance between the machines. MTR is an invaluable network diagnostic tool, particularly when trying to isolate the source of issues like latency or connectivity issues. When submitting a ticket to Distil Support, you may be asked to provide an MTR.

Install and run MTR on Windows

Unlike traceroute, MTR is not installed on Windows by default. Luckily, installing and running MTR on Windows is very easy!

  1. Download and run WinMTR
  2. Type the domain in the appropriate input field and press Start
  3. Once the 'Sent' column reaches at least 1000 (a few minutes), click 'Stop'
  4. Click 'Copy Text to clipboard' and send the paste to the support thread

Install and run MTR on Linux

  1. Open a terminal window
  2. Install mtr (via apt, yum, or other depending on your platform)
  3. Run

    mtr example.com -c 1000 -r

  4. Copy and paste the output to the support thread

Install and run MTR on Mac OS

There are a few different ways to get MTR installed on a Mac, but here is the simplest.

  1. Download and install MTR
  2. Open a terminal window
  3. Run

    mtr example.com -c 1000 -r

  4. Copy and paste the output to the support thread.