Running an MTR network trace

You may be asked by the Pexip support team to run an MTR trace towards a node at one of our global PoPs.

The MTR tool is a simple yet effective network diagnostics tool that combines a traceroute and ping test. It helps with analyzing potential issues on a customer or carrier network, such as routing issues between carriers, packet loss on the carrier path and edge networking equipment.

System administrators may already be using this tool or something similar. If you do not have the tool already installed please follow the below guide for installation:

  • Windows users: to download the Windows installer package, visit the WinMTR website to obtain the Windows installer file from their official download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/winmtr/
  • Mac users: the process is a bit more involved for Mac users as it requires the use of Homebrew package manager. Go to https://brew.sh/ and follow the instructions there to install Homebrew.

Running the trace

To complete a full network and last mile analysis the trace needs to be run in both directions:

  • Pexip cloud network to customer's edge
  • Customer's network to Pexip edge

Last mile issues can occur on one path and not the other.

You will be advised by the Pexip support team member on what type of trace to run. In most cases, a standard ICMP trace with a larger MTU size (1000-1500 bytes) is required.

The trace should ideally be run from the same VLAN as the video conference equipment to help identify any internal network configuration issues. If network equipment is configured to deprioritize ICMP requests this will provide a false positive and not be useful in analyzing the internal network path.

Outbound trace (customer to Pexip)

The trace needs to be run from a computer within your network to an IP or host address of a Pexip edge service. To perform this trace successfully your network equipment needs to be configured to allow ICMP/UDP datagram requests on your internal equipment and through your firewall/proxy.

Inbound trace (Pexip to customer)

Should Pexip need to trace back to your network, we request that you allow incoming ICMP/UDP datagram requests from your edge networking equipment. This can be limited to specified Pexip cloud service IP addresses which will be provided by the Pexip support engineer.