[dmytton]

Traceroute is fine for casual analysis but it is inaccurate and/or incomplete for anything serious because it misses routers that use load balancing on packet headers. For research purposes, it's better to use Paris Traceroute: https://paris-traceroute.net

> Why should you use Paris traceroute?

> Because traceroute fails in the presence of routers that employ load balancing on packet header fields. The failures lead to the discovery of inaccurate and incomplete paths, that may mislead operators during problem diagnosis and result in erroneous internet maps. Paris traceroute, by controling packet header contents, obtains a more precise picture of the actual routes that packets follow.

[cmroanirgo]

just stumbled across: https://www.dublin-traceroute.net

> Dublin Traceroute uses the techniques invented by the authors of Paris-traceroute to enumerate the paths of ECMP flow-based load balancing, but introduces a new technique for NAT detection.

[jlgaddis]

There are also Python bindings [0] for dublin-traceroute which allows things like analysis with pandas or generating charts.

---

[0]: https://github.com/insomniacslk/python-dublin-traceroute

[travbrack]

This looks neat. Do you know what specifically it does differently than the traditional one? The blurb is vague and the "learn more" link is dead.

[dmytton]

There is also the paper that introduced it at https://paris-traceroute.net/images/imc2006.pdf

[gpvos]

Try the "about" link at the top.

[travbrack]

Ah, wasn't showing up on mobile

[052c7028e]

Akamai uses something similar to perform trace routes in-band of HTTP TCP sessions to clients: https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/94/materials/slides-94-...