mtr

mtr at a glance

mtr (My Traceroute) is a widely used network diagnostic tool that combines ping and traceroute into a live, continuously updating view of the path and loss to a host — a staple for diagnosing network problems. It ships releases in an unhurried cadence; it's a diagnostic tool run on demand.

For admins mtr is simple and low-risk. It usually comes from the distribution, and the update driver is fixes and features rather than security. On Linux it may need elevated privileges (or a capability) to send raw packets — that's expected. Its value is diagnostic: quickly see where along a path latency or packet loss appears, which is invaluable for isolating whether a problem is local, at the ISP, or beyond. Interpret results with care, since intermediate hops may deprioritize ICMP. There's little to maintain beyond keeping a current version. Patchletter surfaces new mtr releases so fixes land.