The
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.
Print both host hostnames and numeric addresses.
Normally
prints only hostnames if
-n
is not specified, and only numeric addresses if
-n
is specified.
-m hoplimit
Specify maximum hoplimit, up to 255.
The default is 30 hops.
-n
Do not resolve numeric address to hostname.
-N
Use a packet with no upper layer header for the probes,
instead of UDP datagrams.
-p port
Set UDP port number to
port
-q probes
Set the number of probe per hop count to
probes
-r
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).
-s src
Src
specifies the source IPv6 address to be used.
-U
Use UDP datagrams for the probes.
This is the default.
-v
Be verbose.
-w 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:
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.
RETURN VALUES
The
utility will exit with 0 on success, and non-zero on errors.