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.smarthost.net 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:
• Click on Clear History in the drop-down menu to remove the hosts you have previously traced.

To run WinMTR from Windows command:

• Copy the WinMTR.exe file in Windows/System32 so that it’s accessible via the command line – cmd.
• Run winmtr -help to see the options available.
• Run winmtr hostname (e.g.smarthost.net).

To install MTR on Debian and Ubuntu:

Issue the following commands to ensure that your system’s package repository is up to date, that all installed packages are up to date, and finally to install MTR itself:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install mtr-tiny

CentOS and Fedora:

Issue the following commands to update repositories, upgrade installed packages, and install the MTR program:

yum update
yum install mtr

Arch Linux systems:

Issue the following commands to update the package database and install MTR:

pacman -Sy pacman -S mtr

To run an MTR on Linux:

Once installed, call it in the shell using your terminal emulator by typing ‘mtr’ followed by the name of the host.

mtr smarthost.net

The result will look similar to this:

It’s also possible to run MTR with the –report option. 10 packets are sent to each hop and the results are generated.

--report smarthost.net

The result will look like this:

Mac OSX:

• Press Command+Space and type Terminal and press enter/return key.
• Type in Terminal app:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

• Press enter/return key. Wait for the command to finish.
• Run:

brew install mtr

• You can now run MTR