Traceroute in Tiger

I was having problems with my DSL service tonight, so I dropped to a terminal window and did a traceroute on a trusty web address that I check in these situations. Unfortunately, just like I had seen on my Linux box in the past, after the packets from traceroute hit my router, they went no further. Everything was timing out.

I finally found that, just like current versions of Linux out there, the traceroute command that comes with Mac OS X uses UDP packets by default. In my situation, the router does not let them pass through.

ICMP packets to the rescue! With Tiger, the traceroute command now allows you to specify the -I command which forces it to use ICMP packets.

For more information, check out the article at macosxhints.

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