Network Working Group G. Malkin Request for Comments: 1393 Xylogics, Inc. January 1993 Traceroute Using an IP Option Status of this Memo This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested. Please refer to the current edition of the "IAB Official Protocol Standards" for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Abstract Traceroute serves as a valuable network debugging tool. The way in which it is currently implemented has the advantage of being automatically supported by all of the routers. It's two problems are the number of packets it generates and the amount of time it takes to run. This document specifies a new IP option and ICMP message type which duplicates the functionality of the existing traceroute method while generating fewer packets and completing in a shorter time. Table of Contents 1. Traceroute Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Traceroute Tomorrow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2.1 Basic Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2.2 IP Traceroute option format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.3 ICMP Traceroute message format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3. Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.1 Hop Counts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.2 Destination Node Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3.3 Router Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6. Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Malkin