TRACEROUTE6(8) System Manager's Manual TRACEROUTE6(8)

traceroute6print the route IPv6 packets will take to a network node

traceroute6 [-adeEIlnNrTUv] [-f firsthop] [-g gateway] [-m hoplimit] [-p port] [-q probes] [-s src] [-t tclass] [-w waittime] target [datalen]

The traceroute6 utility uses the IPv6 protocol hop limit field to elicit an ICMPv6 TIME_EXCEEDED response from each gateway along the path to some host.

The only mandatory parameter is the destination host name or IPv6 address. The default probe datagram carries 12 bytes of payload, in addition to the IPv6 header. The size of the payload can be specified by giving a length (in bytes) after the destination host name.

TCP probes have no payload and the datalen parameter is ignored for TCP.

Other options are:

Turn on AS# lookups for each hop encountered.
as_server
Turn on AS# lookups and use the given server instead of the default.
Debug mode.
Firewall evasion mode. Use fixed destination ports for UDP and TCP probes. The destination port does NOT increment with each packet sent.
Detect ECN bleaching. Set the bit and report if that value has been bleached or mangled.
firsthop
Specify how many hops to skip in trace.
gateway
Specify intermediate gateway ( traceroute6 uses routing header).
Use ICMP6 ECHO instead of UDP datagrams.
Print both host hostnames and numeric addresses. Normally traceroute6 prints only hostnames if -n is not specified, and only numeric addresses if -n is specified.
hoplimit
Specify maximum hoplimit, up to 255. The default is 30 hops.
Do not resolve numeric address to hostname.
Use a packet with no upper layer header for the probes, instead of UDP datagrams.
port
Set UDP port number to port.
probes
Set the number of probe per hop count to probes.
Bypass the normal routing tables and send directly to a host on an attached network. If the host is not on a directly-connected network, an error is returned. This option corresponds to the SO_DONTROUTE socket option; it can be used to ping a local host through an interface that has no route through it (e.g., after the interface was dropped by a routing daemon).
src
Src specifies the source IPv6 address to be used.
tclass
tclass specifies the used when sending probe packets. The value must be a decimal integer in the range 0 to 255. The default is 0.
Use TCP segments for the probes.
Use UDP datagrams for the probes. This is the default.
Be verbose.
waittime
Specify the delay time between probes.

This program prints the route to the given destination and the round-trip time to each gateway, in the same manner as traceroute.

Here is a list of possible annotations after the round-trip time for each gateway:

!N
Destination Unreachable - No Route to Host.
!P
Destination Unreachable - Administratively Prohibited.
!S
Destination Unreachable - Not a Neighbour.
!A
Destination Unreachable - Address Unreachable.
!
This is printed if the hop limit is <= 1 on a port unreachable message. This means that the packet got to the destination, but that the reply had a hop limit that was just large enough to allow it to get back to the source of the traceroute6. This was more interesting in the IPv4 case, where some IP stack bugs could be identified by this behaviour.

The traceroute6 utility will exit with 0 on success, and non-zero on errors.

ping(8), ping6(8), traceroute(8)

The traceroute6 utility first appeared in WIDE hydrangea IPv6 protocol stack kit.

May 17, 1998 Mac OS X 12