From: Darafei Praliaskouski Date: Thu, 7 May 2026 21:53:32 +0000 (+0400) Subject: docs: clarify how mtr probes hops X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/gitweb/index.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=refs%2Fpull%2F605%2Fhead;p=thirdparty%2Fmtr.git docs: clarify how mtr probes hops --- diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 13d8af1..717bd35 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -5,11 +5,15 @@ mtr combines the functionality of the 'traceroute' and 'ping' programs in a single network diagnostic tool. As mtr starts, it investigates the network connection between the host -mtr runs on and a user-specified destination host. After it -determines the address of each network hop between the machines, -it sends a sequence of ICMP ECHO requests to each one to determine the -quality of the link to each machine. As it does this, it prints -running statistics about each machine. +mtr runs on and a user-specified destination host. It sends probes to +the destination with successively larger time-to-live values, and uses +the responses from intervening routers to discover and measure the path. +As it does this, it prints running statistics for each hop. + +Intermediate routers may be configured to never send these ICMP +responses, or may rate-limit them, so apparent loss at an intermediate +hop does not always mean that forwarded traffic is being lost at that +point. mtr is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2. See the COPYING file for details.