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Show HN: Traceroute Visualizer (kriztalz.sh)

98 points by PranaFlux ↗ HN
This nifty tool plots the traceroute results and shows you the RTT as well as the distance travelled by the packets!

Supports MTR, flyingroutes and of course, traceroute.

The existing solutions were too limited so I made that.

Let me know if you have any feedback

18 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 41.1 ms ] thread
idanatomix
This is great! Really loved the tool, I would probably position the map over the table tbh..
PranaFlux
Thanks for the feedback! It's true that the first's job is to visualize - we can read the details after
don_searchcraft
This is pretty sweet, nice job. i dig the mapping visualization.
Meph504
I'm not sure if this worked as intended when tracert to google.com I get my IP, skips 13 hops, then 10 unknowns?
OlivOnTech
I'm on my phone, maybe your site would benefit having sample data available to showcase what it can do?
Lalo-ATX
didn't work for me at all.

auto-detected my IPv4 addy, but my tracert to google.com went over IPv6.

I'm pretty skeptical about being able to geolocate router interfaces from IP addresses, so I was curious about the output. My expectations were low but they were too high. Oh well.

jeroenhd
I don't think it can parse IPv6 traceroutes.

For IPv4, the geolocation information is quite limited (city-level) so if you live close to a major data center, you'll have a distance of 0 on the map.

Still, seeing the routes on the map is kind of fun. I don't think it provides anything useful in terms of troubleshooting that mtr doesn't provide already, but there's a fun novelty to see your traces on a map like in a 90s hacker movie.

kam
The calls to the ipinfo.io API are blocked by Firefox Enhanced Tracking Protection. No results for Location or ISP without turning that off.
tonymet
I love more tooling and attention given to latency . Throughput gets the attention but latency is what drives a high quality experience
bpbp-mango
I don't think it works with Windows tracert output

edit: edited my windows traceroute to match the linux format and it works nicely. great tool.

protocolture
Hmm, I dont feel like this is a good use of traceroute.

Its already kind of nebulous, what with MPLS no-decrement-ttl and tunneling protocols.

Add to that geo ip is often fantastically wrong. Especially if the ISP has no need for it for its own troubleshooting. They might not go out of their way to update geoip correctly, relying on the routers hostname for information.

Blowing it up to display it on a map and pretend like the data returned from traceroute is aligned with reality rubs me the wrong way.

reincoder
I work for IPinfo and provided the data for it. The original intention for the project was to identify data center locations. The original idea of the project came from https://stefansundin.github.io/traceroute-mapper/. I reworked it and then OP added a lot of bells and whistles. For my day-to-day work, I still use my version.

I manage approximately 1,200 PoPs that are part of IPinfo's ProbeNet platform, which is used to generate our internet measurement data. We, in turn, use this data to produce the IP geolocation data you utilize. The issue is that the servers we manage can be moved to different locations or not be in the advertised locations. We operate these PoPs across 500 cities.

Whenever the PoP fails to meet certain physical location checks, I run basic diagnostic tests to determine where the server is located and where it is not. Aside from running ping and traceroute operations to the target servers, I can run traceroutes to certain IP addresses whose paths I am familiar with. A traceroute visualizer provides a visual interface, information on the ASN, the geolocation, and the time measurements. This provides an intuitive view of where the server "could not be" located rather than could be located. We use several techniques to run basic diagnostic tests. This traceroute visualizer isn't an official test of IPinfo; it is something I vibe-coded together. There are far better internal tools, such as running ping and traceroutes across all of our ~1,200 servers simultaneously.

It is a network diagnostic tool. I think based on your comment, it is not just a tool, it is more of an abstraction of a tool! But it is somewhat useful I thinkl.

I am happy to hear your thoughts. I manage these servers and we are trying our best to improve our data consistently. So, any ideas or even random thoughts you might have can help us improve.

jacquesm
Nice idea, but shoddy implementation, it does not properly detect the starting point based on my IP and the route shown is not matching what I know about the physical topology of the network in this region. You probably should ask infrastructure providers if they are willing to give you access to the endpoint and physical routes rather than just to use geolocation for IP addresses resulting in errors and unrealistic routes. There are only a couple of players in that space, and I think they sell the data. Otoh, given the current situation with attacks on infrastructure they might not be willing to accommodate a party without a strict need.
regsvr32
Neat project! The instant map visualization makes it much easier to grok what's happening on the wire compared to just reading out hops and ping times.
preinheimer
Love it, I'm still often surprised by how long a hop can be. e.g. I'm looking at one from France to Singapore.

If you're looking to trace to something far away when doing a demo we've got servers in ~280 cities around the world so <random large city>.wonderproxy.com works. e.g. taipei.wonderproxy.com or santiago.wonderproxy.com, berlin, newyork, etc.